WORDSWORTH    AND    HIS    CIRCLE 


WILLI A.M    WORDSWORTH 

BY    MARGARET    GILLIES 


WORDSWORTH  AND  HIS 
CIRCLE 


BY 

DAVID   WATSON   RANNIE,    M.A. 

AUTHOR    OF    "  A    STUDENt's    HISTORY    OF    SCOTLAND  " 


WITH     TWENTY    ILLUSTRATIONS 


OF  THE     "^ 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


New  York:    G.   P.   PUTNAM'S  SONS 

London:    METHUEN    &    CO. 

1907 


^2l 


PREFACE 

This  book  does  not  aim  at  being  a  biography  of  Wordsworth, 
though  it  is  strung  on  a  biographical  thread  ;  and,  as  the  title 
indicates,  it  is  in  many  places  as  much  about  Wordsworth's 
contemporaries  as  about  himself. 

As  my  method  is  deliberately  desultory,  I  have  tried,  with 
whatever  success,  to  be  on  my  guard  against  repetition,  the 
attendant  shadow  of  desultoriness.  The  first  chapter,  being 
introductory,  contains  a  kind  of  forecast,  or  summary  in  advance, 
of  the  chief  contents  of  the  chapters  that  follow. 

It  is  impossible  to  be  even  initiated  into  Wordsworth  without 
knowing,  and  knowing  well,  a  great  deal  of  his  poetry.  I  have, 
therefore,  not  stinted  myself  in  quotation  and  comment,  though 
I  have  tried  to  avoid  the  reproduction  of  verses  which  might 
conceivably  be  regarded  as  trite  or  insignificant.  In  the 
Appendix  will  be  found  references  for  those  quotations  the 
whereabouts  of  which  is  not  clearly  shown  in  the  text. 

The  prefixed  list  of  authorities  may  serve  the  double  purpose 
of  showing  the  sources  from  which  I  have  drawn,  and  guiding 
the  reader  who  may  wish  to  go  more  deeply  into  the  subject 

D.  W.  R. 

Winchester,  1907 


171587 


GENERAL 


PRINCIPAL   AUTHORITIES 


ordsworth  :  Complete  Works.    Edited  by  William  Knight,  with  Memoirs, 
tie   Poetical    Works   of  Wordsworth.     Edited  by   Thomas   Hutchinson 

(Oxford  Edition.)     1895. 
tie  Complete  Poetical  Works  of  Wordsworth.    With  an  Introduction  by 

John  Morley.     9th  ed.     1903.     In  this  edition  the  Poems  are  arranged 

chronologically, 
'ordsworth's  Prose  Works.     Edited  by  Grosart.     3  vols.     1876. 
rose  Works  of  William  Wordsworth.    Edited  by  William  Knight.     2  vols. 

1896. 
''ordsworth's  Literary  Criticism.     Edited,  with  an  Introduction,  by  Nowell 

C.  Smith.     1905. 
''ordsworth's  Guide  to  the  Lakes.  5th  ed.,  1835.    With  an  Introduction,  etc., 

by  Ernest  de  Selincourt.     1906. 
mrnals  of  Dorothy  Wordsworth.    Edited  by  William  Knight.    2  vols.    2nd 

ed.     1904. 
orothy  Wordsworth's  Recollections  of  a  Tour  in  Scotland.      Edited  by 

J.  C.  Shairp.     1874. 

[emoirs  of  W.  Wordsworth.     By  Christopher  Wordsworth,  D.D.     2  vols. 

1851. 
/"ordsworth.    By  F.  W.  H.  Myers.     (EngHsh  Men  of  Letters.) 
/"ordsworth.     By  Elizabeth  Wordsworth, 
oetical  Works  of  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge.     Edited,  with  a  Biographical 

Introduction,  by  James  Dykes  Campbell, 
ife  of  Coleridge.     By  J.  D.  Campbell, 
oleridge  :  Biographia  Liter  aria.     (Bohn's  Libraries.) 
oleridge :  Table  Talk. 

otelis  :  Eat'ly  Recollectio7is.     {Remijiiscences.)     1837  and  1847. 
Irs.  Sandford :   Thomas  Poole  and  his  Frie7ids.     2  vols, 
lemorials  of  Coleorton.     Edited  by  WilHam  Knight.     2  vols.     1887. 
outhey's  Works. 

outhey  :  Life,  Letters,  and  Select  Correspondence.     By  his  Son. 
outhey.     By  Edward  Dowden.     (English  Men  of  Letters.) 
Charles  Lamb  :  Complete  Works,  with  Memoir.    Edited  by  Alfred  Ainger. 
hades  Lamb.     By  Ainger.    (English  Men  of  Letters.) 
.ife  of  Charles  Lamb.     By  E.  V.  Lucas. 
)e  Ouincey  :  Collected  Works.    Edited  by  David  Masson. 
)e  Ouincey.     By  David  Masson.    (English  Men  of  Letters.) 
app's  (H.  A.  Page)  Life  of  De  Ouincey. 

lazlitt:  Complete  Works.    (Waller  and  Glover.)    12  vols.    Specially 
^able  Talk;  Spirit  of  the  Age;  Winter  slow. 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


William  Wordsworth Frontispiece 

By  Margaret  Gillies. 

From  a  photograph  by  Messrs.  Waltmley  Bros.,  Amhhside.  Facing  Page 

Wordsworth's  Birthplace 24 

From  a  photograph  hy  Air.  Pettitt,  Kcsxvick. 

Ann  Tyson's  Home  at  Hawkshead        .       .       .       .       .       .26 

Coleridge's  House  at  Nether  Stowey 57 

From  a  photograph  by  Messrs.  Frith,  Reigate. 

Alfoxden  House  as  it  is  now 65 

From  a  photograph  by  Messrs.  Frithy  Reigate, 

Dorothy  Wordsworth 91 

By  W.  Crowbent. 

From  a  photograph  by  Messrs.  Waimsley  Bros.,  Ambleside. 

Robert  Southey  in  1798 icx) 

By  Robert  Hancock,  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 

Dove  Cottage,  Town  End,  Grasmere 124 

From  a  photograph  by  Mr.  Pettitt,  Keswick. 

Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge  in  1814 142 

By  Washington  Allston,  A.R.A.,  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 

Grasmere  Church 154 

From  a  photograph  by  Mr.  Pettitt,  Keswick. 

Mrs.  Wordsworth 172 

By  Margaret  Gillies. 

From  a  photograph  by  Messrs.  Waimsley  Bros.,  Afiibleside. 

Thomas  de  Quincey 207 

By  Sir  J.  Watson  Gordon,  R.A.,  P.R.S.A.,  in  the  National  Portrait 
Gallery. 


Xll 


WORDSWORTH    AND   HIS   CIRCLE 


Facing  Page 
.     230 


Charles  Lamb  in  1824  or  1825 

By  Thomas  Wageman. 

Sir  Walter  Scott ^^ 

By  Sir  Edwin  Landseer,  R.A.,  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 

Professor  John  Wilson  ("Christopher  North")      .        .       .252 

From  a  pkoto-raph  by  Messrs.  Walmsley  Bros.,  Ambleside. 

270 

Rydal  mount 

Front  a  photograph  by  Mr.  Pettitt,  Kes-^ick. 

William  Wordsworth -°9 

By  Henry  William  Pickersgill,  R.A.,  in  the  National  Portrait 
Gallery. 

DORA  Wordsworth  (Mrs.  Ouillinan)  ......    294 

By  Margaret  Gillies. 

Froitt  a  photograph  by  Messrs.  Wahnsley  Bros.,  Ambleside. 

Fox  How ^°^ 

From  a  photograph  by  Mr.  Pettitt,  Keswick. 

The  Graves ^^^ 

From  a  photograph  by  Mr.  Pettitt,  Keswick. 


/  OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


WORDSWORTH    AND    HIS 
CIRCLE 

CHAPTER  I 

INTRODUCTORY 

WORDSWORTH  IN  HIS  CIRCLE 

IN  one  sense  it  seems  a  dubious  use  of  metaphor  to  regard 
Wordsworth  as  the  centre  of  any  circle.  For,  if  we  think 
of  a  body  of  men  as  a  circle,  we  must  think  of  the  centre  as  one 
of  a  group  who  shares  its  qualities  ;  one  who  gives  and  takes, 
who  lives  in  intellectual  community  and  not  alone.  Yet  no  fact 
about  Wordsworth  is  more  certain  and  more  striking  than  his 
essential  solitariness.  To  him,  even  more  than  to  Milton,  his 
own  words  belong  :  /its  soul  luas  like  a  star  and  dwelt  apart. 
The  Puritanism  of  his  age,  the  culture  of  his  age,  are  much 
more  perceptible  in  Milton,  than  are  any  sympathies  of  the 
eighteenth  or  nineteenth  century  in  the  work  of  Wordsworth. 
Milton,  for  all  his  mighty  originality,  was  a  classicist ;  he  was 
proud  to  work  on  traditional  lines  ;  his  form  was  as  great  as  his 
matter,  and  is  inseparable  from  it.  But  Wordsworth  had  the 
daring,  defiant  individuality  of  the  true  Romantic.  He  thought 
of  himself,  and  he  thought  rightly,  as  a  reformer,  an  innovator, 
in  poetry  ;  and  he  neither  had,  nor  believed  himself  to  have, 
much  essential  kinship  with  any  of  his  contemporaries.  He 
always  had  enthusiastic  admirers,  and  always  friends  whose 
cordial  admiration  fell  short  of  enthusiasm ;  but  there  was 
not   one    of  them,   who    was  wholly   without   perplexity   and 


2  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

disappointment  about  the  master,  not  one  who  could  wholly 
abandon  the  attitude  of  apology. 

While  disciples  and  admirers  were  not  without  r.ncertainty 
and  occasional  dissent,  Wordsworth  himself  habitually  felt  a 
serene  self-complacency  which  enclosed  him  as  a  constant 
envelope,  but  which  must  not  be  confounded  with  any  kind  of 
vulgar  egotism.  Traces  of  such  egotism  there  undoubtedly 
were  in  Wordsworth  ;  but  they  have  really  nothing  to  do  with 
that  consciousness  of  mission  and  certainty  of  ultimate  success 
which  gave  to  this  poet  the  prophet's  high  self-regard  and 
solitary  outlook. 

Wordsworth  wrote  to  Lady  Beaumont  in  1807  that  he  was 
"  easy-hearted "  with  respect  to  his  poems.  "  Trouble  not 
yourself,"  he  wrote,  "  upon  their  present  reception  ;  of  what 
moment  is  that  compared  with  what  I  trust  in  their  destiny  ? 
— to  console  the  afflicted  ;  to  add  sunshine  to  daylight  by 
making  the  happy  happier ;  to  teach  the  young  and  the 
gracious  of  every  age  to  see,  to  think,  and  feel,  and  therefore  to 
become  more  actively  and  securely  virtuous  ;  this  is  their  office." 
Such  self-criticism  is  nearly  as  impersonal  as  the  words  which 
immediately  precede  it — 

"  It  is  an  awful  truth,  that  there  neither  is  nor  can  be,  any 
genuine  enjoyment  of  poetry  among  nineteen  out  of  twenty  of 
those  persons  who  live,  or  wish  to  live,  in  the  broad  light  of  the 
world — among  those  who  either  are,  or  are  striving  to  make 
themselves,  people  of  consideration  in  society.  This  is  a  truth, 
and  an  awful  one,  because  to  be  incapable  of  a  feeling  of  poetry, 
in  my  sense  of  the  word,  is  to  be  without  love  of  human  nature 
and  reverence  for  God." 

One  who  thus  thinks  of  poetry  and  of  his  own  effort  in  its 
service,  must  feel  and  speak  as  if  alone  in  a  wilderness ;  and 
perhaps  no  British  man  of  letters  was  ever  in  this  sense  so  un- 
related, so  original,  as  Wordsworth.  His  detachment  is  only 
made  more  obvious  by  the  recognition  of  his  debt  to  fore- 
runners, and  of  his  disciples'  debt  to  him.  In  two  very 
important  respects,  the  way  was  prepared  for  Wordsworth,  not 
in  Britain  only,  but  in  Europe :  men's  affections  were  turning 
from  purely  human  interests  to  interests  in  which  landscape  had 
a  large  share  ;  and  from  the  attractions  of  elaborate  civilization 
to  those  of  extreme  simplicity.    No  two  men  ever  moved  further 


INTRODUCTORY  S 

apart  than  Rousseau  and  Wordsworth ;  yet  their  common 
ground  and  the  identity  of  some  of  their  presuppositions  are 
notorious.  Nor,  among  his  British  contemporaries,  is  it  only 
Wordsworth  who  reminds  us  of  Rousseau.  Goldsmith  and 
Cowper,  not  less  than  the  ballad-restorers  or  such  a  Romantic 
medisevalist  as  Chatterton,  felt,  each  in  his  own  way,  that  dis- 
approval of  things  as  they  were,  that  discontent  with  civilized 
man,  which  Rousseau  indulged  with  such  startling  results. 
Goldsmith  expressed  them  with  a  somewhat  conventional 
pensiveness ;  in  Cowper  they  were  made  to  subserve  the 
Evangelicalism  of  the  age  ;  but  the  burden,  in  both,  was  a 
praise  of  rusticity  and  simplicity,  an  appreciation  of  man  as 
man,  without  any  lendings  or  trappings,  which  are  not  far  from 
Rousseau's  central  thought.  And  if  Rousseau's  thought  became 
revolutionary,  it  must  be  remembered  that  Wordsworth's 
sympathies,  in  some  of  his  strongest  hours,  were  on  the  side  of 
the  Revolution.  He  hailed  the  great  French  upheaval  as  a 
resuscitation  of  man  ;  and  the  passion  of  his  maturity,  his  hatred 
of  Napoleon,  was  passion  for  the  freedom  which  the  tyrant  had 
overthrown.     So  he  read  the  events. 

But  none  of  this  makes  Wordsworth's  originality  less  com- 
plete. The  Nature  to  which  he  preached  and  led  a  return,  had 
a  very  different  complexion  from  the  Nature  of  Rousseau's 
worship  ;  and  in  the  rare  atmosphere  of  its  high  places  we  may 
be  sure  that  Goldsmith  and  Cowper  would  have  found  it  hard 
to  breathe.  Even  in  his  earliest  work,  in  the  Evening  Walk 
and  Descriptive  Sketches  (in  the  latter  of  which,  indeed,  Cole- 
ridge saw  "the  emergence  of  an  original  poetic  genius  above 
the  horizon,"  but  which  are  only  remotely  Wordsworthian),  we 
find  a  treatment  of  landscape  very  different  from  Cowper's. 
Cowper's  feeling  for  landscape  leaves  little  to  be  desired  in 
genuineness  ;  but  his  method  of  description  has  nothing  of  the 
intimacy  of  Wordsworth's.  And  when,  in  and  after  Lyrical 
Ballads,  Wordsworth  became  Wordsworthian,  he  thought  and 
spoke  of  Nature,  whether  as  revealed  in  man,  or  in  that  world 
of  the  open  air  in  which  man  lives  and  moves,  as  no  one, 
either  in  or  out  of  Britain,  had  thought  and  spoken  of  it  before. 
Some  of  his  predecessors  had  observed  Nature  with  affectionate 
care  and  truly  and  beautifully  rendered  her  details ;  many 
had  personified  her ;  but  it  was  left  for  Wordsworth  to  realize 


4  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

her  as   a  living  unity,   and   to  love  her   as    the   saints   love 
God. 

Nor  is  Wordsworth's  isolation  less  striking  if  we  think  of 
the  history  of  his  influence.  Immediately  and  remotely,  by 
repulsion  as  well  as  by  attraction,  his  influence  has  been 
immense ;  but  it  has  never  been  of  the  kind  which  leads  to 
imitation.  Wordsworth  founded  no  school.  His  words  ran 
over  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land  ;  his  thought  has  sunk 
deep  into  one  generation  after  another ;  but  hardly  any  one  has 
borrowed  his  accents  or  attempted  to  complete  his  message. 
Nor  can  it  be  said  of  him,  as  it  can  be  said  of,  e.g,  Byron,  Scott, 
or  Tennyson,  that  he  was  the  spokesman  of  an  age,  that  he 
ministered  to  prevalent  taste,  that  he  made  articulate  the 
thoughts  and  feelings  which  were  striving  for  expression  in 
younger  as  well  as  lesser  men.  What  in  this  sense  we  call. 
popularity  could  never  be  affirmed  of  Wordsworth.  He  sang  of 
"  things  common  "  indeed  ;  but  there  are  many  ways  of  "  touch- 
ing" such  things,  and  Wordsworth's  way  was  not  the  world's. 

To  find  Wordsworth's  circle,  then,  we  must  think  partly  of 
his  many  contemporary  literary  and  artistic  friends  and  ad- 
mirers, cordial  always,  but  always  critical ;  partly  of  that  opulent 
cluster  of  Romantic  poets  with  their  attendant  and  Hke-minded 
critics,  among  whom  Wordsworth,  in  spite  of  his  singularity, 
must  be  ranked.  In  the  latter  sense,  the  circle  must  be  held 
to  include  Burns  and  Blake,  Shelley  and  Keats,  as  much  as 
Coleridge  and  Southey,  De  Quincey  and  Charles  Lamb. 

About  the  great  literary  outburst  which  marked  the  close  of 
the  eighteenth,  and  the  first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
so  much  has  been  said  that,  probably,  the  less  one  now  says  the 
better.  All  that  one  may  hope,  or  need  attempt,  to  do,  is  to 
rehearse  some  generally  recognized  conclusions  and  point  out 
some  special  aspects  and  distinctions.  If  we  ignore  these  we 
shall  miss  Wordsworth's  place  in  literary  history. 

The  Romantic  Revival,  as  it  is  the  fashion  to  call  the  out- 
burst, was  a  Kunity  in  diversity.  It  was  a  unity,  as  the  spring- 
time is  a  unity,  inasmuch  as  it  brought  new  life  into  the  world, 
the  world  of  verse  and  prose,  of  feeling  and  thought.  It  was  a 
unity  inasmuch  as  it  depended  upon  novelty ;  as  it  worked  on 
men's  minds  by  way  of  surprise,  excitement,  sense  of  change. 
It  was  a  unity  inasmuch  as  it  came  to  be  associated,  often 


INTRODUCTORY  5 

loosely  and  rhetorically,  with  the  French  Revolution,  as  if  it 
were  a  kind  of  literary  and  artistic  counterpart  of  that  great 
social  and  political  movement.  But  its  diversity  is  more 
apparent  than  its  unity;  Even  if  we  could  bring  ourselves  to 
believe  that  one  impulse,  or  a  small  number  of  kindred  impulses, 
produced  the  Romantic  Revival,  we  should  have  to  acknowledge 
that  the  Revival  included  a  great  many  very  different  things,  of 
which  the  interconnection  is  by  no  means  obvious.  It  has  been 
called — not  without  good  reason — the  "  Renascence  of  Wonder." 
It  has  been  called,  with  equally  good  reason,  the  restoration  of 
English  poetry  to  Nature,  or  of  Nature  to  English  poetry.  It 
was  certainly  the  revival  of  various  and  beautiful  lyrical 
measures  ;  it  was  a  new  birth  of  lyrical  passion  ;  it  was  the 
revival  of  delight  in  love;  it  was  the  recovery  of  power  to 
recognize  and  render  the  beautiful.  It  was  a  reaction  against 
a  long  monopoly  in  poetry  of  the  satire  of  society.  It  included, 
as  we  have  seen,  a  recovered  sense  of  the  beauty  and  significance 
of  landscape ;  and  with  this  must  be  conjoined  a  recovered 
sense  of  the  attractiveness  of  animals,  and  of  their  claim  on 
human  interest  and  affection.  It  was  an  assertion  of  the  rights 
of  individuality  in  genius  against  the  obligation  of  literary 
tradition.  It  was  the  discovery  of  light  in  the  "Dark  Ages," 
in  that  mediaeval  world  which  had  seemed  the  mere  ruin  and 
negation  of  classical  culture.  Last,  but  not  least,  in  the 
Romantic  Revival  poetry  became  essentially  and  truly  "  meta- 
physical." It  asserted  its  kinship  with  theology  and  philosophy  ; 
it  assumed  prophetic  garments  and  mystical  accents ;  it  became 
the  interpreter  of  symbols,  the  revealer  of  realities  beyond  the 
phantasmagoria  of  the  senses. 

One  feature  was,  on  the  whole,  common  to  the  many  aspects 
of  the  movement,  and  the  recognition  of  it  will  bring  us  back  to 
Wordsworth.  Romance  is  the  cult  of  the  extraordinary,  the 
unusual ;  its  presupposition  is  that  in  the  world  of  art  a  refuge 
is  to  be  found  from  the  tyranny  of  what  is  common,  under 
which  daily  experience  groans.  Very  different  were  the  pre- 
suppositions of  the  poetry  and  fiction  dominant  in  Britain  for 
more  than  a  hundred  years  before  the  Romantic  Revival  can 
be  said  to  have  begun.  The  poetry  of  Dryden  and  Pope 
assumed  the  all-sufficiency  as  poetic  themes  of  contemporary 
society,    manners,   and    politics.     The   so-called    "  comedy    of 


6  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

manners,"  which  culminated  in  Congreve,  found  its  subject- 
matter  and  inspiration  in  the  same  quarters.  The  English  novel 
renounced  all  connection  with  the  preposterous  romarxe  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  and  nourished  its  mighty  youth  on  the 
most  homely,  sometimes  the  most  sordid,  realities  of  British  life. 
The  poetry  which  intervened  between  Pope  on  the  one  hand, 
and  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth  on  the  other,  was  a  poetry  of 
transition,  which  foreshadowed  the  future  as  well  as  recalled  the 
past.  But  in  the  prose  romance  of  awe  and  supernatural  terror 
which  Horace  Walpole  handed  on  to  Mrs.  Radcliffe,  and  in  the 
old-world  opulence  of  Chatterton  and  Ossian  and  the  ballad- 
restorers,  literature  turned  its  face  resolutely  from  the  temporary 
and  the  ordinary  towards  the  extraordinary  and  the  remote. 
And  this  conversion  was  of  the  very  essence  of  the  Romanticism 
which  glowed  like  a  bright  star  on  the  opening  of  the  nineteenth 
c^tury. 

"  But  what,"  the  reader  may  ask,  "  has  it  got  to  do  with 
Wordsworth  ?  "  Was  not  Wordsworth's  battle  for  the  homely, 
the  ordinary ;  was  it  not  his  boast,  his  reproach,  and  his  glory, 
that  he  found  *'  a  tale  in  everything "  ;  that  "  the  moving  acci- 
dent "  was  not  his  trade ;  and  that  in  humble,  everyday  life,  its 
peasantry,  its  flowers,  its  speech,  its  "  nameless  unregarded  acts," 
the  best  stuff  of  poetry  was  to  be  found  ?  The  Romanticism  of 
Coleridge,  of  Byron,  of  Scott,  of  Southey,  of  Keats,  is  evident ; 
but,  if  the  cult  of  the  extraordinary  and  remote  is  essential  to 
Romanticism,  is  it  consistent,  is  it  reasonable,  to  call  Words- 
worth a  Romantic  ? 

The  answer  is  that  Romanticism  claims  Wordsworth  by 
virtue  of  his  imagination.  In  the  following  pages  we  shall  have 
to  hear  much  about  imagination.  It  is  enough  to  say  now  that 
Wordsworth  regarded  that  faculty  very  seriously ;  that  he  con- 
ceived himself  to  possess  it  in  large  measure  ;  and  that  he 
thought  of  it  as  the  poet's  chief  warrant.  And  while  he  gloried 
in  choosing  lowly  themes  for  poetry,  he  utterly  repudiated  the 
judgment  that  his  poetry  itself  was  lowly.  He  believed  that 
his  imaginative  faculty  transformed  the  themes,  and  transformed 
them  creatively,  as  we  may  believe  that  Divine  Power  transforms 
the  raw  material  or  primordial  protoplasm  of  the  physical 
universe.  The  result,  according  to  Wordsworth,  was  that  the 
common  lost  its  commonness,  and  gained  what  Romanticism  of 


INTRODUCTORY  7 

the  more  ordinary  type  sought  in  the  preternatural,  the  remote, 
the  unusual. 

Avhen  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  made  the  famous  compact 
out  of  which  Lyrical  Ballads  sprang  in  1798,  they  agreed  upon 
a  division  of  labour  in  a  joint  enterprise.  How  they  did  it 
cannot  be  better  told  than  in  Coleridge's  words :  "  It  was  agreed 
that  my  endeavours  should  be  directed  to  persons  and  characters 
supernatural,  or  at  least  romantic  ;  yet  so  as  to  transfer  from 
our  inward  nature  a  human  interest  and  a  semblance  of  truth 
sufficient  to  procure  for  these  shadows  of  imagination  that 
willing  suspension  of  disbelief  for  the  moment,  which  constitutes 
poetic  faith.  Mr.  Wordsworth,  on  the  other  hand,  was  to  propose 
to  himself  as  his  object,  to  give  the  charm  of  novelty  to  things  of 
every  day,  and  to  excite  a  feeling  analogous  to  the  supernatural, 
by  awakening  the  mind's  attention  from  the  lethargy  of  custom, 
and  directing  it  to  the  loveliness  and  the  wonders  of  the  world 
before  us ;  an  inexhaustible  treasure,  but  for  which,  in  con- 
sequence of  the  film  of  familiarity  and  selfish  solicitude,  we  have 
eyes,  yet  see  not,  ears  that  hear  not,  and  hearts  that  neither  feel 
nor  understand." 

"To  excite  a  feeling  analogous  to  the  supernatural;"  that 
was  the  end  which  Wordsworth  proposed  to  himself  in  his 
poetic  operations.  It  was  to  be  reached  by  the  exercise^  of 
imagination,  and,  by  virtue  of  imagination,  he  was  a  fellow- 
worker  with  the  author  of  the  Rime  of  the  Ancient  Mariner. 

Perhaps  we  best  understand  Wordsworth's  literary  relation- 
ships and  his  place  in  literary  history  when  we  realize  his  differ- 
ences from  one  or  two  of  his  predecessors  on  the  one  hand,  and 
from  some  of  his  famous  contemporaries  on  the  other. 

Among  the  predecessors  none  are  more  eminent  and  none 
more  characteristic  of  the  eighteenth  century  than  Pope  and 
Gray.  With  both  Wordsworth  thought  of  himself  as  in  antago- 
nism ;  against  both,  at  least  in  certain  respects,  he  led  a  revolt. 
Against  Pope,  indeed,  the  revolt  had  begun  long  before  Words- 
worth's day,  when,  in  1756,  Joseph  Warton  published  the  first 
volume  of  his  Essay  on  the  Writings  and  Genius  of  Pope,  The 
reputation  of  Pope's  successors,  of  Gray  and  Ossian  and  the 
ballad-editors,  was  itself  a  testimony  to  reaction  against  the 
Popian  despotism.  But  Wordsworth  was  more  than  ten  years 
old  when  Dr.  Johnson  published  his  Lives  of  the  Poets,  in  which 


8  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

Pope,  though  treated  with  searching  critical  discrimination,  was 
held  up  as  a  genuine  and  great  poet.  "  Let  us  look  round  upon 
the  present  time,"  cried  the  Doctor,  "  and  back  upon  the  past ; 
let  us  inquire  to  whom  the  voice  of  mankind  has  decreed  the 
wreath  of  poetry  ;  let  their  productions  be  examined  and  their 
claims  stated  ;  and  the  pretensions  of  Pope  will  be  no  more 
disputed.  Had  he  given  the  world  only  his  version  [of  Homer] 
the  name  of  poet  must  have  been  allowed  him."  Wordsworth's 
view  of  Pope  was  very  different.  He  admits  that  he  had 
"  melody  "  and  "  a  polished  style,"  but  he  considered  his  great 
reputation  a  false  one.  He  hated  personal  satire,  which  plays 
such  a  large  part  in  the  poetry  of  Dryden  and  Pope ;  and  he 
found  Pope  wanting  in  the  three  essentials  of  poetry — passion, 
imagination,  and  truth  to  Nature.  It  was  chiefly  because  of  his 
lack  of  the  last-named  quality  that  Wordsworth  was  in  antago- 
nism to  Pope.  In  an  admirable  sentence  he  says  that  Pope 
"having  wandered  from  humanity  [in  his  Pastorals]  with  boyish 
inexperience,  the  praise  which  these  compositions  obtained 
tempted  him  into  a  belief  that  Nature  was  not  to  be  trusted, 
at  least  in  pastoral  poetry."  Pope,  like  Dryden  before  him, 
wrote  about  Nature  as  a  man  born  blind  might  write.  And 
Wordsworth's  mission  was  to  show  that  Nature  might  be 
trusted. 

"  Nature  never  did  betray  the  heart  that  loved  her." 

Wordsworth's  revolt  against  Gray  was  part  of  his  revolt 
against  "  poetic  diction."  He  tried,  in  practice  and  in  criticism,  to 
break  down  distinctions  between  expression  in  prose  and  expres- 
sion in  verse  ;  and,  rightly  or  wrongly,  he  held  that  Gray  did 
all  he  could  to  raise  and  confirm  such  distinctions.  In  other 
words,  he  thought  Gray  an  artificial  poet,  and  as  such,  he,  the 
Poet  of  Nature,  felt  obliged  to  treat  him  as  a  foe. 

Towards  the  more  Romantic  of  his  predecessors,  the  author 
of  the  Ossian  poems,  and  the  ballad-writers,  and  even  towards 
such  true  landscape  lovers  as  Thomson  and  Cowper,  Words- 
worth was  very  critical.  He  frankly  admits  Thomson's  inspira- 
tion ;  but  he  says  that  he  has  a  vicious  style  with  false  ornaments, 
and  that  he  utters  sentimental  commonplaces.  He  mocks  at 
Cowper  for  his  apologetic  admiration  of  "  that  coarse  object,  a 
furze-bush."     For  Percy's  Reliques,  indeed,  he  has  nothing  but 


INTRODUCTORY  9 

praise.  But  Ossian  !  Gray,  whose  work  it  is  not  easy  to  regard 
as  in  any  sense  Romantic,  Gray,  the  most  fastidious  of  classicists, 
was  delighted  with  Ossian.  When  the  first  instalment  appeared, 
he  wrote  to  Horace  Walpole  :  "  Is  there  any  more  to  be  had  of 
equal  beauty,  or  at  all  approaching  to  it  ?  "  And  on  a  further 
acquaintance  with  the  poems,  he  describes  himself  as  "  struck, 
extasi^,  with  their  infinite  beauty." 

Wordsworth,  for  his  part,  mercilessly  tears  the  unhappy 
imposture  to  tatters  ;  he  spurs  on  his  somewhat  sluggish  rhetoric, 
and  decides  that  the  book  "is  essentially  unnatural  ...  a 
forgery  audacious  as  worthless." 

With  the  rank  and  file  of  Germano-British  Romanticism  in 
prose  fiction  and  in  verse,  Wordsworth  had  no  sympathy. 
Reformer  among  reformers  as  he  was,  he  took  a  pessimistic 
view  of  the  efforts  of  those  who  were  in  some  respects  his  fellow- 
workers.  Like  all  the  reformers,  he  wished  literature  to  be 
exciting  and  stimulating  rather  than  formal  and  dull ;  but  he 
held  that  the  ruck  of  the  Romanticists  used  "  gross  and  violent 
stimulants"  to  attain  their  end.  He  aimed  at  passion  and 
emotion,  they  at  sentimentalism  and  sensationalism  ;  and  the 
result  was  a  degradation  of  Hterature.  "  The  invaluable  works 
of  our  elder  writers,"  he  wrote  in  1800,  "I  had  almost  said  the 
works  of  Shakespeare  and  Milton,  are  driven  into  neglect  by 
frantic  novels,  sickly  and  stupid  German  tragedies,  and  deluges 
of  idle  and  extravagant  stories  in  verse." 

Such  being  Wordsworth's  temper,  it  is  a  matter  of  interest  to 
observe  his  relation  to  his  great  poetic  contemporaries,'  and  to  the 
younger  men  who  came  after  them.  Coleridge  was  his  dear 
and  Hfe-long  friend  ;  and,  in  Lyrical  Ballads,  one  of  the  land- 
marks of  Romanticism,  the  Ancient  Mariner  appeared  side  by 
side  with  the  Idiot  Boy  and  the  Tintern  Abbey  lines.  Was  not 
the  Ancient  Mariner  an  "idle  and  extravagant  story  in  verse," 
or  was  it  redeemed  only  by  Wordsworth's  contributions  to  it, 
the  tale  of  the  shot  albatross  and  a  line  or  two  here  and  there, 
and  by  the  moral  about  cruelty  to  animals  ?  There  is  no 
evidence  to  show  that  critical  questions  greatly  disturbed 
Wordsworth's  admiration  of  and  loyalty  to  his  "marvellous" 
colleague  and  friend.  But  we  do  know  that  Wordsworth  had 
his  doubts  about  the  rank  of  Coleridge's  most  distinctively 
Romantic  poetry.   We  know  that  he  considered  that  Coleridge's 


10  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

poetic  achievement  fell  short  of  his  poetic  gifts  ;  that  the  in- 
felicity of  his  lot  had  shut  him  from  that  sympathy  with  others, 
which  is  granted  only  to  long  and  tranquil  experience,  and 
without  which  the  best  poetry,  which  is  a  poetry  of  human 
nature,  cannot  be  made.  And  we  know,  finally,  that  he  regarded 
the  preternatural,  which  counts  for  so  much  in  Coleridge,  as  the 
pis  aller  of  a  poet  who  could  not  reach  the  natural. 

If  Wordsworth  thought  thus  of  Coleridge's  most  famous 
efforts  in  poetry,  we  must  be  prepared  to  find  him  somewhat 
cold  to  others  of  his  contemporaries.  We  should  hardly  expect 
him  to  find  spiritual  kinship  in  Byron,  whose  satirical  treatment 
of  him  was  hardly  relieved  by  even  a  passing  expression  of 
admiration.  But  what  of  him  who  was  in  R.  L.  Stevenson's 
phrase,  "  far  and  away  the  King  of  the  Romantics,"  what  of 
Walter  Scott  ?  Deep  was  the  respect,  and  genuine  the  love 
which  the  two  men  had  for  one  another  ;  and  much  of  their 
work,  surely,  was  done  in  the  same  field.  Scott  was  more  of  a 
narrative  poet  than  Wordsworth ;  he  had  the  externalism  to 
which  the  narrative  poet  is  prone,  and  his  love  of  pomp  and 
circumstance  ;  and  Wordsworth  recognized  this.  In  the  intro- 
duction to  The  White  Doe  of  Rylstone  he  points  out  that  it  was 
the  inwardness  of  historical  events  that  interested  him  ;  and  that 
whereas  Scott  made  events  march  in  the  orthodox  manner 
towards  a  catastrophe,  he,  for  his  part,  was  content  with  an 
external  pageantry  of  mere  failure,  so  long  as  it  might  be  made 
the  exponent  of  some  hidden  moral  victory.  But  surely  in  their 
rendering  of  Nature,  in  the  loving  portraiture  of  mountain  and 
sky  and  flower,  the  two  poets  were  in  fullest  sympathy  and 
co-operation.  Yet  Wordsworth  does  not  seem  to  have  felt  the 
sympathy.  His  criticism  of  Scott  is  always  depreciatory,  and 
he  does  not  seem  to  have  even  dreamed  of  placing  him  in  a  high 
rank.  He  recognized  Southey's  great  cleverness  and  power  of 
narrative  in  verse  ;  but  denied  him  imagination  and  inspiration. 
Burns  he  loved  and  reverenced  ;  but  could  never  forget  his 
moral  shortcomings,  and  was  curiously  insensible  of  his  lyrical 
merit. 

Keats  and  Shelley  were  a  generation  younger  than  Words- 
worth ;  yet  they  were  as  truly  reformers  and  restorers  of  English 
poetry  as  he  was.  In  spite  of  occasional  scofiftngs,  they  regarded 
him  as  a  doyen  ;  and  the  three  were  linked  together  against  all 


INTRODUCTORY  11 

artificiality  and  Philistinism  in  their  art.  Yet  it  does  not 
appear  that  Wordsworth  took  any  real  interest  in  the  work  of 
his  two  great  junior  contemporaries. 

As  the  world  knows,  Wordsworth's  unsympathetic  critics  tried 
to  fix  him  in  a  circle  of  their  own  drawing.  "  The  Lake 
School,"  the  "  Lakists,"  such  was  the  circle  of  Francis  Jeffrey's 
devising:  it  was  a  triangle  rather,  and  denoted  Wordsworth, 
Coleridge,  and  Southey,  while  it  connoted  "  lakishness,"  that 
is  to  say,  poetical  incompetence  and  triviality,  parading  as 
affected  simplicity,  and  pretentious  philosophy.  The  animus 
which  Jeffrey  breathed  into  others  is  dead,  and  the  criticism 
which  it  moved  is  obsolete ;  but  the  Lake  School  will  live  for 
ever,  not  as  a  sect,  but  as  a  noble  band  of  pioneers,  or  say  rather 
as  a  cluster  of  satellites  about  a  star,  whose  brightness,  like  that 
in  the  prophet's  vision,  shines  "out  of  the  North."  Nowhere 
else  in  Britain,  save  in  the  wizard-held  borderland,  has  any 
limited  area  of  soil  been  so  definitely  and  solemnly  set  apart  for, 
and  consecrated  to,  the  Muses,  as  that  region  of  mountain,  lake, 
and  gushing  streams  which  is  shared  by  the  three  counties  of 
Cumberland,  Westmorland,  and  Lancaster.  Grasmere  Vale, 
with  its  sweet  lake  and  engirdling  hills  ;  Windermere,  with  its 
islands,  reaching  away  to  the  south  ;  the  shores  of  Derwent- 
water  under  the  stately  bulk  of  Skiddaw ;  these  are  the  spots 
where  the  ghostly  presences  are  thickest.  It  was  a  great 
moment  in  British  literary  annals  when  Wordsworth,  a  wanderer 
on  the  face  of  the  earth,  resolved  to  return  to  the  place  of  his 
birth,  and  live  and  die  there. 

"  Many  were  the  thoughts 
Encouraged  and  dismissed,  till  choice  was  made. 
Of  a  known  Vale,  whither  my  feet  should  turn, 
Nor  rest  till  they  had  reached  the  very  door 
Of  the  one  cottage  which  methought  I  saw." 

Nearly  as  memorable  was  the  July  day,  six  months  after  the 
Wordsworths  settled  at  Grasmere,  when  Coleridge  tried  to 
become  a  respectable  householder  at  Greta  Hall,  near  Keswick. 
For  to  Greta  Hall,  three  years  later,  came  Southey ;  and  there 
he  remained  for  half  a  century,  a  centre  of  strenuous  intellectual 
life  long  after  poor  Coleridge  had  drifted  away  on  his  dreary 
and  discreditable  course.     Wordsworth  and  Southey  were  the 


12  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

two  fixed  points  in  the  Lake  Country  to  which  admirers  and 
settlers  resorted. '  Coleridge  was  sometimes  to  be  seen.  Thomas 
de  Quincey,  like  Coleridge  an  opium-eater,  one  of  Wordsworth's 
sympathetic  exponents  in  the  ears  of  an  unbelieving  generation, 
came  to  be  his  neighbour  for  about  twenty  years.  Shelley  took 
his  first  wife  to  Keswick  and  tried,  though  in  vain,  to  become 
something  of  a  Lakist  To  the  shores  of  Windermere,  came 
"  Christopher  North "  and  Mrs.  Remans,  both  well  within 
Wordsworth's  circle.  Hardly  could  that  be  said  of  Harriet 
Martineau,  who  nevertheless  was  Wordsworth's  fairly  intimate 
neighbour  for  a  few  years.  But  it  might  surely  be  said  of 
Thomas  Arnold,  the  great  headmaster  of  Rugby,  who  was  lord 
of  Fox  How  and  Wordsworth's  true  friend  from  1832  to  his 
sudden  death  ten  years  later.  Whatever  share  Wordsworth's 
influence  may  have  had  in  bringing  John  Ruskin  to  spend  the 
afternoon  and  evening  of  his  days  on  Coniston  Water,  it  is 
legitimate  to  remark  on  the  fitting  juxtaposition  of  the  two 
men  who,  more  than  any  other  Englishmen  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  or  perhaps  in  any  age,  were  the  interpreters  of  Nature's 
message  to  mankind. 

The  poet  who  dwelt  in  so  imperial  a  solitude  and  in  so  royal 
a  company  remains,  after  the  criticism  of  a  hundred  years  has 
done  its  worst  and  best  on  him,  somewhat  of  an  enigmatical 
figure.  That  which  the  blunt  insensibility  of  the  early  critics 
scorned  as  "  lakishness,"  was  undoubtedly  there,  in  the  man,  his 
genius  and  his  work  ;  and,  though  we  no  longer  scorn  it,  we  are 
sometimes  daunted  and  sometimes  perplexed  by  it.  In  the 
cHmate  of  poetry  we  expect  sunshine  and  balmy  airs  ;  in 
Wordsworth  we  feel,  now  and  again,  a  chill  and  blight  which 
spoil  one's  pleasure.  Whence  come  this  east  wind  and  these 
dull  skies  }  Why  does  Wordsworth's  poetry  seem  so  unequal 
in  value,  so  apt  to  fail  in  charm  ?  How  can  one  who  some- 
times, who  often,  rises  so  high,  sink  at  times  so  low .?  How 
should  so  transcendent  and  so  inartificial  a  poet  fail  to  know 
when  he  is  writing  mere  dull  prose  in  conventional  form  of 
verse?  Or  is  it  we,  his  readers,  who  are  at  fault,  and  not 
Wordsworth  ?  Is  it  only  that  we  are  but  partially  initiated, 
and  that,  with  more  perfectly  purged  ears,  we  should  hear 
nothing  but  music  ? 

These  questions  are  put  only  that  they  may  be  deprecated 


INTRODUCTORY  13 

and  dismissed.  It  is  best  to  take  Wordsworth  as  he  took  him- 
self, quite  seriously,  and  to  dwell  with  him  for  a  season,  not  so 
much  that  we  may  reconsider  him  critically,  not  that  we  may 
make  a  new  attempt  to  "  place  "  him,  not  that  we  may  sift  what 
we  like  in  his  poetry  from  what  we  dislike,  but  that  we  may 
know  him  as  he  was,  and  try  to  be  worthy  of  his  friendship. 

Some  things  we  shall  do  well  to  grasp  firmly  at  the  outset. 
There  were  certain  features  in  Wordsworth  which  give  a  kind 
of  gnarled  structure  to  his  character  and  his  poetry.  (He  insisted 
on  reconciling  and  combining  certain  things  which  are  often 
kept  apart,  and  which  some  people  think  should  always  be  kept 
apart.  Imagination  and  morality  are  two  such  things.  In 
Wordsworth's  estimation,  imagination  was  the  mainspring  of 
poetry.  When  he  speaks  about  imagination  in  prose,  Words- 
worth tries  to  be  logical  and  precise ;  but  when  he  speaks  of  it 
in  poetry,  he  uses  language  of  that  vaguely  adumbrative  kind 
which  one  has  to  be  content  with  in  presence  of  transcendent 
religious  ideas.  And,  indeed,  Wordsworth's  feeling  about 
imagination  was  giiasl-religious.  Imagination  was  creative  energy, 
in  using  which  the  poet  was  transmitting  Divine  power.  And 
so  has  many  another  poet  thought  of  it — so  far,  at  least,  as  its 
prerogatives  go.  Many  poets  and  many  critics  have  claimed 
for  genius  the  absolutism  of  a  Divine  right,  as  though  it  could 
make  its  own  rules  or  dispense  with  rules  of  any  kind  ;  as  if  it 
had  its  own  atmosphere  and  independent  criteria.  But  no  such 
claim  did  Wordsworth  make.  For  him  imagination  had  rules  as 
stringent  as  its  power  was  divine.  Not  for  one  instant  did  he 
conceive  of  his  art  as  exercised  in  a  non-moral  way,  represent- 
ing, without  any  preference  that  was  not  purely  aesthetic,  the 
facts  of  life  for  pleasure's  sake  only.  Wordsworth's  morality 
makes  him  enigmatic  and  hard  to  approach.  There  would  be 
no  enigma  in  the  matter  if  we  could  class  him  as  a  didactic 
poet,  as  one  who  simply  sought  to  recommend  religion  and 
morality  in  good  verse.  From  some  of  his  writing  about  his 
own  work,  some  of  the  letters  in  which  he  spoke  with  least 
formality  about  his  own  purposes,  we  might  almost  conclude 
that  he  aimed  at  nothing  but  the  crudest  didacticism.  But,  if 
his  achievement  had  been  of  this  kind,  his  name  might  have 
been  conspicuous  in  the  annals  of  morality  and  religion,  but 
could  not  have  stood  where  all  men  now  find  it,  in  the  front 


14  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

rank  of  English  poetry.  When  Wordsworth  thought  carefully 
about  his  poetry,  he  made  it  plain  that  its  object  was  artistic ; 
he  spoke  of  pleasure  as  his  end,  with  a  frankness  which  might 
satisfy  the  most  ardent  devotee  of  art  for  art's  sake.  And 
indeed  his  practice  speaks  as  eloquently  as  his  theory.  In  all 
his  central  poetic  work  he  sings  of  the  human  and  the  Divine 
at  their  meeting-points  with  the  vagueness  of  the  poet,  not  the 
definiteness  of  the  moralist  or  theologian.  Yet  it  is  not  always 
so  ;  occasions  are  frequent  when  he  seems  to  lapse  into  the 
didactic ;  when  the  mood  which  he  creates  is  too  serious  to  be 
called  pleasure,  and  the  truth  which  he  enforces  is  too  austere  to 
be  called  beauty.  And  the  reader  of  Wordsworth  will  often 
be  embarrassed  by  the  apparently  conflicting  efforts  of  such 
imagination  as  Shakespeare  might  have  done  obeisance  to,  and 
such  mere  moral  reflectiveness  as  seems  anything  but  imagina- 
tive. He  is  troubled  by  an  uncomfortable  antithesis  between 
philosophy  and  profit ;  and  he  is  surprised  that  the  poet  seems 
to  have  felt  so  little  the  discomfort  that  is  so  irksome  to  him. 
He  wonders  whether  Wordsworth's  imagination  acted  inter- 
mittently ;  whether  his  genius  was  a  kind  of  mechanical  mixture 
of  gold  and  clay;  or  whether  a  more  patient  and  intense  study 
may  not  show  some  higher  unity  in  which  the  contradiction  is 
resolved. 

Another  knot  in  the  Wordsworthian  structure  which  forces 
the  reader  to  exert  himself,  is  the  political  element  in  his  genius 
and  poetry.  He  has  to  realize,  in  fact,  that  the  two  cardinal 
things  in  Wordsworth  are  his  passion  for  Nature  and  his  passion 
for  public  liberty,  and  that  the  latter  passion  is  as  strong  as  the 
former.  He  once  told  an  American  visitor,  the  Rev.  Orville 
Dewey,  that  he  had  given  twelve  hours'  thought  to  the  condition 
and  prospects  of  society  for  one  to  poetry  ;  and  we  can  believe 
it.  We  find  that,  strictly  speaking,  even  Wordsworth's  best 
poetry  of  Nature  has  a  social  and  political  source  ;  that  not 
until  the  impulses  of  his  boyhood  had  been  chastened  by  social 
experience  and  political  shocks,  was  he  able  to  interpi-et  Nature 
at  all.  The  whole  of  his  early  manhood  was  determined  by 
England's  active  hostility  to  France  ;  by  the  shock  and  the 
shame  of  finding  his  country  at  war — so  it  seemed  to  him — with 
the  struggle  for  liberty  of  a  neighbouring  land.  His  best  poetr}' 
\^    was  made  as  the  result  of,  and  in  reaction  from,  that  shock ; 


/ 


INTRODUCTORY  15 

through  it  mainly  he  heard  "the  still,  sad  music  of  humanity;" 
and  he  first  truly  knew  Nature  as  the  healer  of  a  soul  thus 
suffering.  Not  less  true  is  it,  though  perhaps  less  widely  known, 
that  the  main  bent  of  his  genius  in  middle  life  was  determined 
by  another  political  shock,  the  revelation  of  the  aims  of  Napoleon. 
A  common,  and  not  wholly  erroneous,  way  of  putting  this 
matter  is  to  represent  Wordsworth  as  having  changed  his 
political  opinions  from  something  not  far  short  of  republicanism 
to  a  Toryism  that  would  admit  no  thought  of  compromise. 
But  the  change  was  more  dramatic.  No  reader  of  the  Sonnets 
Dedicated  to  National  Independence  and  Liberty  can  miss  the 
wonderful  ring  of  their  passionate  patriotism,  or  will  be  surprised 
to  learn  that  such  passion  had  a  powerful  and  very  definite  cause. 
It  was  in  1793  that  Wordsworth's  love  of  England  was  shocked 
by  her  hostility  to  the  French  Revolution  ;  it  was  in  1807,  when 
he  knew  that  Swiss  liberty  had  been  destroyed  by  Napoleon, 
that  his  sympathies  forsook  a  nation  which  could  suffer  its 
destinies  to  be  moulded  by  such  a  tyrant.  Even  as  late  as 
September,  1806,  the  solemn  hymn  on  the  dying  of  Charles  James 
Fox  shows  that  Wordsworth  was  not  alienated  from  the  states- 
man whose  sympathy  with  the  French  had  been  so  constant. 
When  the  Genius  of  Liberty,  the  "  High-souled  Maid,"  was 
driven  from  the  sound  of  her  Alpine  torrent,  the  poet's  patriotism^ 
became  less  anxious  and  more  passionate  ;  but  it  was  none 
the  less  a  passion  f»r  freeil^m  and  the  impartial  sway  %i 
righteous  law. 

Then,  when  the  tyrant  was  overthrown,  the  passion  fell, 
and  the  poet  passed  into  that  mood  of  undisturbed  tranquillity 
with  which  we  most  easily  associate  him.  In  theory  he  had 
always  insisted  on  tranquillity  as  the  necessary  solvent  of  poetic 
emotion  ;  he  defined  poetry  as  emotion  recollected  in  tranqidllityy 
and  he  had  always,  in  some  measure,  realized  the  theory.  For 
the  last  twenty-five  or  thirty  years  of  his  life,  the  pulse  of 
emotion  was  feeble,  and  there  seemed  little  but  tranquil  reflec- 
tion left.  These  uncertain  relations  between  emotion  and 
tranquillity  make  a  difficulty  for  the  student  of  Wordsworth. 
The  idea  of  Browning's  Lost  Leader  haunts  him  ;  and  though 
he  may  have  no  word  of  political  blame  for  the  eager  revolu- 
tionist \vho  became  so  stern  a  Conservative,  he  can  hardly 
help  feeling  that  the  poet  whom  he  hailed  as  the  herald  of  a 


16  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

new  age  seemed  to  become  a  mere  holder  of  forlorn  hopes, 
a  timid  and  obstinate  opponent  of  essays  towards  freedom  in 
almost  all  directions. 

It  is,  indeed,  at  once  Wordsworth's  weakness  and  his  glory 
that  the  tranquillity  of  his  genius  put  him  to  some  extent  out 
of  sympathy  with  the  adventurous  temper  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  For  if  it  is  part  of  the  business  of  a  great  poet  to 
lead  the  van  in  the  conflict  of  his  age,  it  is  surely  not  alien  from 
his  office  to  proclaim  uhe  peace  which  passeth  all  understanding 
apart  from  which  the  stress  of  battle  would  be  unendurable  ; 
to  sing  in  the  ears  of  a  generation  much  given  to  change  of  "  a 
repose  which  ever  is  the  same."  Wordsworth  lived  long  enough 
to  witness  many  reactions  ;  and  perhaps,  when  we  know  him 
better,  we  shall  come  to  feel  that  both  flow  and  ebb  were  less 
marked  in  him  than  in  the  periods  in  which  he  lived.  Perhaps, 
as  in  fancy  we  grow  with  his  growth,  share  his  companionship 
and  compare  our  poet  with  contemporary  leaders  of  thought 
and  action  as  they  speak  for  themselves,  we  shall  learn  to  rate 
higher  that  perfect  self-control,  those  ''sober  certainties,"  that 
philosophic  mind  which  were  the  conquest  of  Wordsworth's 
years.  We  may  find  that  the  conquest  was  won  earlier  than 
we  knew  or  he  realized,  and  that  the  thought  which  underlies 
his  work  from  first  to  last  was  more  timeless  and  less  dependent 
upon  either  external  events  or  changes  of  mood  than  at  first 
sight  appears.  Wordsworth  was,  after  all,  a  philosopher  ;  and 
it  is  a  poor  philosophy  which  does  not  transcend  the  changing 
appearances  of  the  time  in  which  it  utters  itself. 

One  thing  the  associate  of  Wordsworth  is  sure  to  feel  as  a 
mere  drawback,  and  that  is  his  lack  of  humour.  Probably  this 
lack,  so  common  yet  always  so  lamentable,  apparently  so  un- 
important but  really  so  far-reaching  in  its  power  of  hindrance 
and  harm,  is  one  of  the  chief  sources  of  what  is  unpleasant  in 
the  'Makishness"  of  Wordsworth.  It  makes  it  possible  to 
feel  his  poetry  old-fashioned:  an  epithet  complimentary  to 
furniture  and  landscape-gardening,  but  hardly  to  poetry.  For 
poetry,  at  all  events  of  the  rank  of  Wordsworth's,  should  always 
be  fresh,  fresh  with  the  eternal  freshness  of  the  spring  or  the 
morning.  And  if  this  freshness,  this  unmistakable,  inexpress- 
ible, irresistible  gusto  is  sometimes  lacking  in  Wordsworth,  is  it 
not  very  often  because  humour  is  weak  ?     For  humour  is  much 


INTRODUCTORY  17 

more  than  the  parent  of  wit,  though  this  is  not  to  be  despised 
in  poetry.  It  is  a  phase  of  intelligence,  an  exercise  of  sym- 
pathy ;  and  the  lack  of  it  involves,  possibly  earnestness,  but  cer- 
tainly dulness,  and  some  insensitiveness,  both  of  the  understand- 
ing and  the  affections.  Such  insensitiveness  was  undoubtedly 
present  in  Wordsworth  ;  and  it  prevented  the  man,  as  it  pre- 
vents his  poetry,  from  being  wholly  and  unfailingly  fresh 
and  charming.  It  explains  also  the  occasional  lapses  into 
individual  self-satisfaction  which  flaw  the  noble  self-conscious- 
ness of  the  great  poet.  For  humour,  even  better  than  humility, 
makes  a  man  immune  from  the  possibility  of  conceit. 

Wordsworth's  fame,  like  his  genius,  suffered  great  vicissitudes. 
"  Forty  and  seven  years  it  is,"  wrote  De  Quincey  in  1845,  "  since 
William  Wordsworth  first  appeared  as  an  author  {i,e.  since  the 
publication  of  Lyrical  Ballads).  Twenty  of  those  years  he  was 
the  scoff  of  the  world,  and  his  poetry  a  by-word  of  scorn. 
Since  then,  and  more  than  once.  Senates  have  rung  with 
acclamations  to  the  echo  of  his  name."  But  as  to  one  phase 
of  his  life  there  was  no  vicissitude.  From  a  certain  day  in  his 
eager  youth,  of  which  we  shall  hear  in  the  next  chapter,  when 
on  his  way  home  from  a  night  of  innocent  pleasure  through 
growing  light  he  passed  through  one  of-  those  decisive  crises 
which  few  men  and  women  with  souls  are  u^fprtiinate  enough 
to  miss,  Wordsworth  was  the  priest  and  prophet  of  Nature,  almost 
exclusively  identified  with  the  lakeland  of  Northern  England. 
There  he  was  born  ;  thither,  before  his  youth  had  quite  faded, 
he  returned  ;  there  he  lay  down  to  die ;  there,  under  its  modest 
headstone,  rests  his  dust.  All  else,  Cambridge,  London,  France, 
even  happy  and  fruitful  hours  in  Dor^t  and  Somerset,  was 
either  education  or  episode.  One  cannot  know  Wordsworth 
without  understanding  the  English  Lakes. 


CHAPTER   II 
CHILDHOOD   AND   BOYHOOD   AMONG  THE   LAKES 

IN  a  passage  of  fine,  lucid,  old-fashioned  prose  Wordsworth 
himself  has  described  the  main  features  of  the  English 
lakeland.  He  asks  the  reader  "to  place  himself,  in  imagina- 
tion, on  some  given  point ;  let  it  be  the  top  of  either  of  the 
mountains,  Great  Gavel,  or  Scawfell ;  or,  rather,  let  us  suppose 
our  station  to  be  a  cloud  hanging  midway  between  those  two 
mountains,  at  not  more  than  half  a  mile's  distance  from  the 
summit  of  each,  and  not  many  yards  above  their  highest  eleva- 
tion ;  we  shall  there  see  stretched  at  our  feet  a  number  of 
valleys,  not  fewer  than  eight,  diverging  from  the  point  on  which 
we  are  supposed  to  stand,  like  spokes  from  the  nave  of  a  wheel. 
First,  we  note,  lying  to  the  south-east,  the  vale  of  Langdale, 
which  will  conduct  the  eye  to  the  long  lake  of  Winandermere, 
stretched  nearly  to  the  sea ;  or  rather  to  the  sands  of  the  vast 
bay  of  Morecambe,  serving  here  for  the  rim  of  this  imaginary 
wheel ;  let  us  trace  it  in  a  direction  from  the  south-east  towards 
the  south,  and  we  shall  next  fix  our  eyes  upon  the  vale  of 
Coniston,  running  up  likewise  from  the  sea,  but  not  (as  all  the 
other  valleys  do)  to  the  nave  of  the  wheel,  and  therefore  it  may 
be  not  inaptly  represented  as  a  broken  spoke  sticking  in  the 
rim.  Looking  forth  again  ...  we  see  immediately  at  our  feet 
the  vale  of  Duddon.  .  .  .  The  fourth  vale,  next  to  be  observed, 
viz.  that  of  the  Esk,  is  of  the  same  general  character  as  the 
last.  .  .  .  Next,  almost  due  west,  look  down  into,  and  along  the 
deep  valley  of  Wastdale,  with  its  little  chapel  and  .  .  .  neat 
dwellings  scattered  upon  a  plain  of  meadow  and  corn-ground.  .  .  . 
Beyond  the  little  fertile  plain  lies,  within  a  bed  of  steep  moun- 
tains, the  long,  narrow,  stern,  and  desolate  lake  of  Wastdale.  .  .  . 
Next   comes   in   view   Ennerdale,  with  its   lake   of  bold   and  i 

i8 


CHILDHOOD  AND  BOYHOOD  AMONG  THE  LAKES    19 

somewhat  savage  shores.  .  .  .  The  vale  of  Buttermere,  with  the 
lake  and  village  of  that  name,  and  Crummock-water,  beyond,  next 
present  themselves.  We  will  follow  the  main  stream,  the  Coker, 
through  the  fertile  and  beautiful  vale  of  Lorton,  till  it  is  lost  in 
the  Derwent,  below  the  noble  ruins  of  Cockermouth  Castle. 
Lastly,  Borrowdale,  of  which  the  vale  of  Keswick  is  only  a 
continuation,  stretching  due  north,  brings  us  to  a  point  nearly 
opposite  to  the  vale  of  Winandermere,  with  which  we  began.  .  .  . 
The  image  of  a  wheel,  thus  far  exact,  is  little  more  than  one-half 
complete  ;  but  the  deficiency  on  the  eastern  side  may  be  supplied 
by  the  vales  of  Wytheburn,  Ulls water,  Haweswater,  and  the  vale 
of  Grasmere  and  Rydal ;  none  of  these,  however,  run  up  to  the 
central  point.  .  .  .  From  this  take  a  flight  of  not  more  than 
four  or  five  miles  eastward  to  the  ridge  of  Helvellyn,  and  you 
will  look  down  upon  Wytheburn  and  St.  John's  Vale,  which  are 
a  branch  of  the  vale  of  Keswick  ;  upon  Ullswater,  stretching 
due  east ;  and  not  far  beyond  to  the  south-east  ...  lie  the  vale 
and  lake  of  Haweswater ;  and  lastly,  the  vale  of  Grasmere, 
Rydal,  and  Ambleside,  brings  you  back  to  Winandermere." 

The  mere  symmetry  of  this  region,  however,  is  nothing  to 
its  concentration,  to  the  thick  sowing  and  close  company  of  its 
beauties.  Surely  on  no  other  equally  small  space  of  the  earth's 
surface  is  there  such  unity  in  variety  ;  nowhere  are  there  such  a 
majestic  type  and  such  delightful  surprises.  Wordsworth's 
'*  image  of  a  wheel "  gives  no  idea  of  the  wealth  and  intricate 
grouping  of  mountains,  the  abundance  of  lakes,  the  individuality 
of  valleys.  And  though  three  counties  contribute,  the  result,  in 
mere  area,  is  so  small !  For  we  must  not  think  of  the  highlands 
of  the  West  Riding,  the  wild  hills  and  dales  of  the  Pennines,  as 
part  of  the  Lake  District.  Physically  and  spiritually,  regarded 
either  geologically  or  scenically,  they  lie  outside  it.  The 
sweeping,  lakeless  dales  of  Western  Yorkshire  with  the  slopes 
of  mountain  limestone  that  bound  them,  belong  to  another  order 
of  things  from  the  Silurian  uplands  and  big  volcanic  and  granitic 
tiills  enclosing  the  lakes  and  tarns,  and  sending  down  the 
[lurrying  "  becks "  of  Westmorland  and  Cumberland.  The 
/alley  of  the  Lune,  which  joins  the  sea  below  Lancaster,  or 
:he  main  line  of  the  London  and  North  Western  Railway  may 
DC  held  to  mark,  with  practical,  though  not  with  geological, 
iccuracy,  the  slight  but  most  real  boundary.     At  Kendal,  or  at 


20  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

Penrith,  you  stand  outside  the  Lakes,  just  as  you  do  on  the  flat 
wastes  of  Morecambe  or  of  Solway.  The  whole  of  little  West- 
morland, a  protruding  tongue  of  Lancashire,  a  bit  of  Cumber- 
land :  that  is  all.  "  O  Love,"  the  poets  might  have  apostrophized 
their  paradise, 

"  O  Love,  thy  province  were  not  large, 
A  bounded  field,  nor  stretching  far." 

The  central  point  of  the  region  is  the  pleasant  little 
mountain  town  of  Ambleside  in  Westmorland.  Stand  just  out- 
side it,  or  look  down  on  it  from  high  ground  on  either  side  of 
Windermere,  and  you  see  the  heart  of  the  district  laid  open 
before  you.  Seeming  close  to  the  lake,  though  a  short  mile 
from  the  actual  wash  of  its  waters,  the  dark  houses  lie  at  the 
very  bases  of  the  mountains,  and  the  valleys  stretch  away  from 
the  quiet  streets.  Far  to  the  west,  you  catch  a  glimpse  of  the 
highest  height  of  all,  the  highest  height  in  England — Scafell 
Pike  and  its  neighbour  Scafell.  Belonging,  for  the  eye  at  least, 
to  the  same  group,  are  the  Coniston  Fells,  dear  to  Ruskin,  and 
the  two  knobs  of  the  Langdale  Pikes.  These  are  the  "  lusty 
twins "  on  which  the  "  Solitary "  of  Wordsworth's  Excursion 
looked  from  his  cottage-window  by  Blea  Tarn,  and  those  who 
know  the  Lakes  at  all  feel,  like  him,  that  they  are  "  prized  com- 
panions." Let  us  learn  at  once  to  associate  them  with  the 
great  lines  in  which  their  spiritual  meaning  is  given.  - 

"  Many  are  the  notes 
Which,  in  his  tuneful  course,  the  wind  draws  forth 
From  rocks,  woods,  caverns,  heaths,  and  dashing  shores  ; 
And  well  those  lofty  brethren  bear  their  part  j 

In  the  wild  concert — chiefly  when  the  storm 
Rides  high  ;  then  all  the  upper  air  they  fill 
With  roaring  sound,  that  ceases  not  to  flow, 
Like  smoke,  along  the  level  of  the  blast, 
In  mighty  current ;  theirs,  too,  is  the  song 
Of  stream  and  headlong  flood  that  seldom  fails  ; 
And,  in  the  grim  and  breathless  hour  of  noon, 
Methinks  that  I  have  heard  them  echo  back 
The  thunder's  greeting.     Nor  have  Nature's  laws 
Left  them  ungifted  with  a  power  to  yield 
Music  of  finer  tone  ;  a  harmony. 
So  do  I  call  it,  though  it  be  the  hand 
Of  silence,  though  there  be  no  voice  ; — the  clouds, 
The  mist,  the  shadows,  light  of  golden  suns, 


CHILDHOOD  AND  BOYHOOD  AMONG  THE  LAKES    21 

Motions  of  moonlight,  all  come  thither — 

Touch,  and  have  an  answer — thither  come,  and  shape 

A  language  not  unwelcome  to  sick  hearts 

And  idle  spirits  : — there  the  sun  himself. 

At  the  calm  close  of  summer's  longest  day. 

Rests  his  substantial  orb  ; — between  those  heights 

And  on  the  top  of  either  pinnacle, 

More  keenly  than  elsewhere  in  night's  blue  vault, 

Sparkle  the  stars,  as  of  their  station  proud. 

Thoughts  are  not  busier  in  the  mind  of  man 

Than  the  mute  agents  stirring  there." 

Before  we  turn  our  eyes  away  from  the  Langdales  and  their 
peers,  let  us  see  what  the  Solitary  saw  there  one  day  at  the 
clearing  of  a  mist. 

"  A  step 
A  single  step,  that  freed  me  from  the  skirts 
Of  the  blind  vapour,  opened  to  my  view 
Glory  beyond  all  glory  ever  seen 
By  waking  sense  or  by  the  dreaming  soul  ! 
The  appearance,  instantaneously  disclosed, 
Was  of  a  mighty  city — boldly  say 
A  wilderness  of  building,  sinking  far 
And  self- withdrawn  into  a  boundless  depth. 
Far  sinking  into  splendour — without  end  ! 
Fabric  it  seemed  of  diamond  and  of  gold, 
With  alabaster  domes  and  silver  spires, 
And  blazing  terrace  upon  terrace,  high 
Uplifted  ;  here,  serene  pavilions  bright. 
In  avenues  disposed  ;  there,  towers  begirt 
With  battlements  that  on  their  restless  fronts 
Bore  stars — illumination  of  all  gems  ! 
By  earthly  nature  had  the  effect  been  wrought 
Upon  the  dark  materials  of  the  storm 
Now  pacified  ;  on  them,  and  on  the  coves 
And  mountain-steeps  and  summits,  whereunto 
The  vapours  had  receded,  taking  these 

Their  station  under  a  cerulean  sky. 
Oh,  'twas  an  unimaginable  sight  ! 

Clouds,  mists,  streams,  watery  rocks  and  emerald  turf. 

Clouds  of  all  tincture,  rocks  and  sapphire  sky, 

Confused,  commingled,  mutually  inflamed, 

Molten  together,  and  composing  thus 

Each  lost  in  each,  that  marvellous  array 

Of  temple,  palace,  citadel,  and  huge 

Fantastic  pomp  of  structure  without  name. 

In  fleecy  folds  voluminous,  enwrapped. 


22  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

Right  in  the  midst,  where  interspace  appeared 

Of  open  court,  an  object  like  a  throne 

Under  a  shining  canopy  of  state 

Stood  fixed  ;  and  fixed  resemblances  were  seen 

To  implements  of  ordinary  use. 

But  vast  in  size,  in  substance  glorified  ; 

Such  as  by  Hebrew  Prophets  were  beheld 

In  vision-forms  uncouth  of  mightiest  power 

For  admiration  and  mysterious  awe. 

This  little  Vale,  a  dwelling-place  of  Man, 

Lay  low  beneath  my  feet  ;  'twas  visible — 

I  saw  not,  but  I  felt  that  it  was  there. 

That  which  I  saw  was  the  revealed  abode 

Of  spirits  in  beatitude  :  my  heart 

Swelled  in  my  breast — '  I  have  been  dead,'  I  cried, 

'And  now  I  live  !  '" 

The  soft  velvety  valley  along  which  the  eye  travels  to  the 
Langdales  is  the  valley  of  the  Brathay ;  and  from  its  heights 
there  descends  to  the  westward  that  ''  River  Duddon,"  to  which 
Wordsworth  was  to  write  so  many  sonnets.  Loughrigg,  with 
its  many  memories,  divides  it  from  the  valley  of  the  Rothay  or 
Rotha,  a  valley  which  seems  to  lead  straight  north  to  the 
gloomy  bulk  of  Fairfield.  A  nearer  view  would  show  that  it  is 
the  Rydal  stream  which  comes  from  those  formidable  heights, 
and  that  the  Rothay  comes  from  the  north-westward.  It 
comes,  in  fact,  from  Helvellyn  through  Grasmere,  which  is 
folded  among  the  hills  under  Dun  mail  Raise,  over  which  you 
can  see  the  gray  thread  of  road  making  towards  Thirlmere  and 
Keswick.  To  the  right  of  that  road  you  catch  a  glimpse  of  the 
top  of  Helvellyn.  On  the  other,  eastern  side  of  Fairfield  beyond 
Wansfell,  you  see  another  road  climbing  to  a  summit :  that 
is  Kirkstone  Pass,  leading  to  Ullswater.  Other  hills,  below 
the  gigantic  dimensions  of  Fairfield  and  Helvellyn,  but  how 
rich  in  story ! — come  out  clear.  There  is  Nab  Scar  below 
Fairfield,  where  Wordsworth's  ghost,  and  Dorothy's^  must  walk  ; 
there,  looking  down  on  Grasmere  from  the  west,  is  Silver  How ; 
and  there,  further  north,  keeping  guard  over  Easedale,  is  the 
Helm,  with  the  Old  Woman  crouching  on  the  top.  In  that  one 
view  (and  you  need  spend  no  long  time  over  it)  you  will 
embrace  the  central  features  of  the  district.  One  other  bit  of 
Wordsworth's  most  fanciful  verse  will  fix  them  for  us.  It  is 
from  that  poem  On  tJie  Namiitg  of  Places  addressed  To  Joajina, 


CHILDHOOD  AND  BOYHOOD  AMONG  THE  LAKES    23 

and  describes  the  effect  of  a  wild  girl's  laughter  among  the  hills. 
The  poet  was  admiring  the  view  from  Grasmere  : — 

"  When  I  had  gazed  perhaps  two  minutes'  space, 
Joanna,  looking  in  my  eyes,  beheld 
That  ravishment  of  mine,  and  laughed  aloud. 
The  Rock,  like  something  starting  from  a  sleep, 
Took  up  the  lady's  voice,  and  laughed  again  ; 
That  ancient  Woman  seated  on  Helm-crag 
Was  ready  with  her  cavern  ;  Hammar-scar, 
And  the  tall  steep  of  Silver-how,  sent  forth 
A  noise  of  laughter  ;  southern  Loughrigg  heard. 
And  Fairfield  answered  with  a  mountain  tone  ; 
Helvellyn  far  into  the  clear  blue  sky 
Carried  the  Lady's  voice, — old  Skiddaw  blew 
His  speaking-trumpet ; — back  out  of  the  clouds 
Of  Glaramara  southward  came  the  voice  ; 
And  Kirkstone  tossed  it  from  his  misty  head." 

The  mention  of  Skiddaw  and  Glaramara  reminds  us,  as  we 
look  over  Ambleside  to  the  mountains,  of  what  lies  beyond  the 
barrier.  From  the  heights  of  Glaramara  the  streams  descend 
northwards  ;  and,  in  particular,  the  Derwent,  flowing  through 
Borrowdale,  expands  into  Dervventwater,  the  most  perfect, 
perhaps,  of  all  the  lakes  ;  rushes  past  Keswick,  where  it  is  joined 
by  the  Greta  from  Thirlmere  ;  disappears  in  the  long  lake  of 
Bassenthwaite,  and  thence  flows  in  a  pleasant  valley  to  the  Irish 
Sea  at  Workington.  All  this  region,  with  Borrowdale  and  the 
Vale  of  St.  John  as  its  avenues  of  approach,  is  dominated  by  the 
great  granitic  masses  of  Skiddaw  and  Blencathara  with  their 
bare  sides.  Neither  of  these  can  be  seen  from  our  view-point 
near  Ambleside ;  and  the  places  on  which  they  look  are  not 
rich  in  central  Wordsworthian  associations.  They  belong  rather 
to  Coleridge  and  Southey — to  Coleridge,  who  found  out  Greta 
Hall  on  its  mound  by  the  Greta  just  outside  Keswick,  and  to 
Southey,  who  spent  in  that  house  half  a  century  of  quiet  and 
laborious  days.  Yet  Skiddaw  and  the  Derwent  were  dear  to 
Wordsworth,  and  for  a  very  good  reason. 

Halfway  between  Keswick  and  Workington,  where  the 
Derwent  flows,  broad  and  tranquil,  but  still  with  quick  pace 
and  whence  the  outlines  of  Skiddaw  are  blue  with  the  haze  of 
distance,  stands  the  market-town  of  Cockermouth.  You  can 
see  at  once  that  it  has  a  busy  present-day  life,  and  also  that  it  is 


24  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

rich  in  associations  with  a  distant  past.  Its  broad  main  street 
is  both  busy  and  dignified  ;  its  two  streams  (Dervvent  and  its 
tributary  the  Cocker,  which  comes  from  Buttermere  and  her 
neighbour  lakes)  feed  some  busy  mills,  while  from  the  high 
ground  on  the  right  of  the  rivers,  the  remains  of  a  mediaeval 
castle  look  down.  On  your  right,  as  you  walk  along  the  main 
street  westward,  you  come  upon  a  house  which  is  evidently, 
even  now,  the  handsomest  house  in  the  town.  It  is  not  a 
poetical  house ;  indeed,  its  many  windowed  frontage,  its  high 
walls  and  heavy  gates  almost  suggest  a  public  institution  rather 
than  a  home.  Behind  it,  a  garden  slopes  shortly  down  to  the 
Derwent. 

In  that  house,  unchanged  since  then,  Wordsworth  was  born 
in  1770,  on  April  /th^  His  father,  Richard  Wordsworth,  was  an 
attorney,  well  to  do,  as  the  character  of  his  house  testifies,  and 
agent  to  the  Lord  Lonsdale  of  his  time.  The  Wordsworths  were 
Yorkshire  people,  the  poet's  grandfather,  father  of  the  Cocker- 
mouth  attorney,  being  the  first  immigrant  into  lake-land. 
Richard,  the  attorney,  strengthened  his  hold  on  the  district  by 
marrying  Anne  Cookson  of  Penrith,  the  daughter  of  a  tradesman 
there,  who  had,  however,  tempered  his  civic  blood  by  taking  to 
wife  a  Crackanthorp  of  Newbiggen  Hall.  At  Cockermouth 
were  also  born  the  rest  of  Richard  Wordsworth's  children,  an 
elder  brother  of  the  poet,  Richard,  a  London  attorney,  who 
died  in  18 16;  Dorothy,  a  year  and  a  half  younger  than 
William  ;  John,  the  sailor,  of  whom  we  shall  hear  much  in  the 
sequel  ;  and  Christopher,  the  Master  of  Trinity  College,  Cam- 
bridge, from  1820  to  1841.  He  died  in  1846,  four  years  before 
his  brother.  He  was  the  father  of  two  bishops,  Christopher, 
Bishop  of  Lincoln,  and  Charles,  Bishop  of  St.  Andrews  ;  and 
grandfather  of  Dr.  John  Wordsworth,  the  present  (1907)  bishop 
of  Salisbury. 

Wordsworth  was  thus  a  northerner  to  the  core,  a  child  hardy 
and  hard-featured.  Yorkshire  blood,  Westmorland  blood  :  the 
dales  and  the  fells  and  the  rapid  brooks  ;  such  was  the  material, 
such  were  the  surroundings,  the  nursery,  of  this  austere  and  yet! 
most  English  poet,  of  this  nobly  conventional,  yet  most  fearlessly 
natural  soul.  There  was  nothing  in  the  near  neighbourhood  of 
Cockermouth  to  pamper  poetic  taste ;  Skiddaw  and  Blenca- 
thara  were  too  far  off,  and  the  fields  and  uplands  were  tame. 


CHILDHOOD  AND  BOYHOOD  AMONG  THE  LAKES    S5 

Two  things  only  there  were  which  breathed  romance  ;  the  high- 
pitched  castle  of  the  thirteenth  century,  where  Mary  Stewart 
was  harboured  after  Langside  and  her  landing  at  Workington  ; 
and  the  broad  and  clear  waters  of  the  Derwent  with  their 
tidings  of  the  lakes  and  hills.  The  child  made  the  most  of 
both.  He  chased  butterflies  on  the  castle-hill;  he  rejoiced  in 
the  yellow  summer-flowers  that  shone]  on  its  green  slopes ;  he 
ventured  awestruck  into  the  darkness  of  its  dungeon.  Coming 
back  as  an  old  man  he  hears  the  spirit  of  the  place  speak  to 
him. 

"  Thou  look'st  upon  me,  and  dost  fondly  think, 
Poet  !  that,  stricken  as  both  are  by  years, 
We,  differing  once  so  much,  are  now  Compeers, 
Prepared,  when  each  has  stood  his  time,  to  sink 
Into  the  dust.     Erewhile  a  sterner  link 
United  us  ;  when  thou,  in  boyish  play, 
Entering  my  dungeon,  didst  become  a  prey 
To  soul-appalling  darkness.     Not  a  blink 
Of  light  was  there  ; — and  thus  did  I,  thy  Tutor, 
Make  thy  young  thoughts  acquainted  with  the  grave  ; 
While  those  went  chasing  the  winged  butterfly 
Through  my  gi-een  courts  ;  or  climbing,  a  bold  suitor. 
Up  to  the  flowers  whose  golden  progeny 
Still  round  my  shattered  brow  in  beauty  wave." 

The  romance  of  the  river,  with  its  living  voice,  was  more 
congenial  to  this  child.  It  was  born  in  the  eagle's  haunts  ;  in 
its  modest  valley,  it  kept  green  a  wreath  fairer  than  that  of  the 
proudest  Roman  conqueror.  To  the  imagination  of  the  man  it 
was  "  the  fairest  of  all  rivers ; "  its  voice,  as  he  said,  "  flowed 
along  "  the  dreams  of  his  childhood.  Into  the  streets,  with  their 
"  fretful  dwellings,"  it  breathed  something  of  Nature's  own  calm. 
The  garden  of  the  big  house  sloped  down  to  the  blue  stream, 
and  was  "  a  tempting  playmate."  In  its  backwaters  the  little 
boy  would  bathe  all  day  long,  and  then  scamper  about  among 
the  ragwort  on  its  sandy  fields  like  a  naked  savage.  It  was,  as 
he  said,  "  fair  seed-time  "  for  his  soul ;  and  he  grew  up  "  fostered 
by  beauty." 

When  school-time  arrived,  he  went  a  step  nearer  the  central 
beauty.  Let  us  go  back  for  a  moment  to  our  view-point  on  the 
high  ground  south  of  Ambleside.  Hitherto,  so  fascinated  have 
we  been  by  the  mountain  panorama  to  the  north,  that  we  have 


26  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS  CIRCLE 

given  no  look  or  thought  to  the  expanse  of  Windermere  behind 
us,  to  the  low,  soft  heights  that  make  its  banks ;  itd  islands,  and 
its  woods  to  the  water's  edge.  Nor  have  we  lingered  long  on 
the  Coniston  Fells  and  the  "  Old  Man,"  so  strong  was  the 
attraction  of  the  Langdale  Pikes  just  beyond  them.  Cross 
Windermere  by  its  famous  ferry,  just  south  of  the  largest  of 
the  islands,  and  then  climb  the  heights  westward,  as  if  you  were 
making  for  the  Coniston  Fells.  You  are  in  that  bit  of  Lanca- 
shire which  helps  to  form  the  Lake  district ;  and,  for  a  time, 
when  a  turn  of  the  road  has  banished  the  last  visible  fragment 
of  Windermere,  you  seem  quite  removed  from  all  the  ordinary 
associations  of  the  Lakes.  Suddenly,  as  you  dip  down  west- 
ward, you  drop  upon  an  unexciting  lake  with  rushy  banks, 
parallel  to  Windermere,  along  which  the  road  runs  northward. 
It  is  Esthwaite  Water.  Follow  the  road  the  full  length  of  the 
lake,  and  you  become  aware  of  a  large  village  of  dark  grey 
houses  climbing  towards  a  long  church  on  a  hill,  looking  like  an 
island  in  the  flats  by  which  the  lake  is  bounded  on  the  north. 
Entering  the  village,  you  have  a  sense  of  much  quaintness,  and 
also  of  some  importance.  There  are  real  streets  in  the  place, 
climbing  and  twisting  curiously,  with  archways  thrown  across 
here  and  there.  Above  all  there  is  the  dominance  of  the  long 
church  with  its  graveyard  on  the  hill.  As  you  stand  by  its 
door  you  see  that  you  have  much  the  same  view  as  you  had 
before.  For  there  in  front  of  you  is  the  great  mountain-barrier  ; 
there  is  the  central  paradise. 

This  large  village,  or  little  town,  is  Hawkshead.  At  the 
eastern  fooc  of  the  church-hill  you  see  school  buildings,  some  old, 
some  recently  restored.  The  Hawkshead  grammar-school  is  an 
old  and  famous  foundation.  It  was  founded  in  1585  by  Edwin 
Sandys,  Archbishop  of  York,  one  of  the  most  praiseworthy  of  the 
Elizabethan  divines,  and  in  the  eighteenth  century  had  a  high 
reputation  in  the  north.  To  Hawkshead  school  all  the  Words- 
worth boys  were  sent ;  and  William  was  there  from  1778  when 
he  was  eight,  until  1787,  when  he  was  sixteen,  and  went  up  to 
St.  John's  College,  Cambridge.  He  was  boarded  with  a  dame 
called  Ann  Tyson,  in  a  house  by  one  of  the  archways. 

Wordsworth's  school  life  was  very  important  in  his  spiritual 
development,  and  it  is  clearly  reflected  in  his  poetry.  He 
learned  much  from  his  excellent  schoolmasters  :  much  from  the 


CHILDHOOD  AND  BOYHOOD  AMONG  THE  LAKES    27 

wholesome  conditions  of  normal  companionship  and  boyish 
sport ;  most  of  all  from  that  teaching  of  Nature  in  which  the 
waters  and  shores  of  Esthwaite  carried  on  the  lessons  of 
Derwent.  In  the  psychology  of  poetic  adolescence,  as  a  study 
of  the  degrees  by  which  a  rather  ordinary  boy  climbs,  and 
climbs  naturally,  to  be  a  poet,  nothing  could  be  more  significant 
than  Wordsworth's  school-time  at  Hawkshead.  He  went  there 
a  healthy,  rather  passionate  child  ;  he  left  it  still  healthy,  still 
passionate,  but  with  new  elements  of  health  and  fresh  food  for 
passion.  His  simplest  experiences  in  that  plain  village,  by 
that'  tame  lake,  were  part  of  a  most  transcendent  training,  and 
some  of  them  are  among  the  permanent  poetic  riches  of  the 
race.  Even  Ann  Tyson,  and  her  cottage  by  the  archway,  the 
little  boy's  second  nursery,  went  beyond  themselves  in  their 
mission.     "  Why  should  I  speak,"  Wordsworth  asks — 

"Why  should  I  speak  of  what  a  thousand  hearts 
Have  felt,  and  every  man  alive  can  guess  ?  " 

Yet  it  was  well,  even  for  a  great  poet,  to  record  the  charm  of 
that  cottage  home,  the  stone  table  under  the  pine  tree,  the 
imprisoned  brook  in  the  garden,  the  moon  seen  from  the 
boy's  bed — 

"  In  splendour  couched  among  the  leaves 
Of  a  tall  ash,  that  near  our  cottage  stood  "  ; 

how, 

"  In  the  dark  summit  of  the  waving  tree, 
She  rocked  with  every  impulse  of  the  breeze," 

for  these  simple  sensuous  impressions  were  the  first  stage  of  a 
spiritual  experience  such  as  had  never  before  been  told,  they  were 
the  alphabet  of  that  poetry  of  common  life  which  it  was  Words- 
worth's mission  to  add  to  the  poetry  of  the  world. 

Nearer  the  heart  of  things  was  the  idealization  of  one  of  the 
Hawkshead  teachers,  that  mysterious  village  schoolmaster, 
"with  hair  of  glittering  gray,"  that  "Matthew"  who  never  lived, 
save  for  the  poet  himself,  and  his  lovers,  that  "  delicate  creation  '* 
of  the  poet's  mind  for  which  a  worthy  concrete  man  supplied 
the  initial  suggestion.  The  Rev.  William  Taylor,  we  have 
svery  reason  to  believe,  an  M.A.  of  Cambridge,  and  headmaster 
of  Hawkshead  School  from   1782  to  1786,  was  one,  and  only 


28  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

one,  of  Matthew's  prototypes.  He  died  while  Wordsworth  was 
at  school,  and  the  poet  has  made  the  circumstance?  of  his  death 
poetically  memorable.  But  it  is  the  abstract  "  Matthew  "  who 
has  the  true  immortality,  and  who  walks  still  in  the  vale  of 
Esthwaite,  and  will  walk,  we  may  predict,  for  ever.  He  is  the 
eternal  type  of  that  rare  and  exquisite  thing,  age  as  companion 
on  equal  terms  of  youth  :  he  stands,  too,  for  the  moral  triumph 
of  cheerful  serenity  over  the  pathos  of  long  survival  and  the 
memories  of  ancient  sorrow.  Wordsworth  introduces  his  name 
as  inscribed  on  a  tablet  in  the  school.  He  pauses  on  it,  and 
recalls  the  personality,  its  lights  and  shadows. 

''  The  sighs  which  Matthew  heaved  were  sighs 
Of  one  tired  out  with  fun  and  madness  ; 
The  tears  which  came  to  Matthew's  eyes 
Were  tears  of  light,  the  deed  of  gladness. 

"  Yet  sometimes,  when  the  secret  cup 

Of  still  and  serious  thought  went  round, 
It  seemed  as  if  he  drank  it  up — 
He  felt  with  spirit  so  profound." 

It  was  Matthew,  and  it  was  by  Esthwaite  Lake — 

"  When  life  was  sweet,  I  knew  not  why," 

who  rallied  William  Wordsworth  on  his  dreaminess,  and  was 
answered  (so  in  afterthought  it  seemed),  in  the  technical 
phraseology  of  the  new  philosophy  of  Nature. 

"  The  eye — it  cannot  choose  but  see  ; 
We  cannot  bid  the  ear  be  still ; 
Our  bodies  feel,  where'er  they  be, 
Against  or  with  our  will. 

"  Nor  less  I  deem  that  there  are  Powers 

Which  of  themselves  our  minds  impress  ; 
That  we  can  feed  this  mind  of  ours 
In  a  wise  passiveness. 

"  Think  you,  'mid  all  this  mighty  sum 
Of  things  for  ever  speaking. 
That  nothing  of  itself  will  come, 
But  we  must  still  be  seeking  ? 

"  Then  ask  not  wherefore,  here,  alone, 
Conversing  as  I  may, 
I  sit  upon  this  old  grey  stone, 
x\nd  dream  my  time  away." 


' 


CHILDHOOD  AND  BOYHOOD  AMONG  THE  LAKES   29 

In  "memory's  shadowy  moonshine"  this  mystical  school- 
master more  and  more  took  the  shape  of  Wordsworth's  typical 
elemental  person,  the  plain  countryman  in  a  simple  beautiful 
place,  who  knows,  the  better  for  his  simplicity,  the  heights  and 
depths  of  joy  and  sorrow.  To  Matthew  belong  the  twin-poems, 
The  Two  April  Mornings  and  The  Fotrntain^  written  in  1799, 
which  breathe  the  purest  Wordsworthianism,  and  which  are 
relevant  here  because  they  show  what  came  of  early  Hawks- 
head  impressions. 

If  ordinary  companionship  led  to  these  extraordinary  poetic 
results,  so  the  boyish  occupations  and  sports  of  the  Hawkshead 
scholar  were  a  natural  initiation  into  the  metaphysics  of  poetry. 
The  mere  external  details  of  those  days  are  given  in  The 
Prelude  with  the  reminiscent  garrulity  of  autobiographic  blank 
verse.  We  are  told  of  skating,  nutting,  dancing,  loo  or  whist 
parties  on  winter  nights,  woodcock-catching  by  moonlight.  But 
we  are  also  told  (and  this  is  what  interests  us,  this  is  what 
makes  the  autobiography  poetic),  how  this  ordinary  boyish 
experience  turned  out  to  be  the  training  of  a  poet's  soul. 

In  the  poem  called  Nutting,  for  example,  which  was  intended 
to  be  part  of  the  Prelude^  we  are  shown  how  things  seen  lead  to 
those  things  which  are  not  seen,  but  are  of  the  eternity  of  poetry. 
Years  afterwards,  when  the  poet  thought  over  happy  days 
among  the  hazel-coppices  on  the  borders  of  Esthwaite,  he 
remembered  one  day  in  particular — a  red-letter  day  in  the 
history  of  his  feeling  for  Nature.  Regarded  merely  sensuously, 
the  day  was  delicious — 

" It  seems  a  day 

(I  speak  of  one  from  many  singled  out) 
One  of  those  heavenly  days  that  cannot  die." 

Well  protected  by  shabby  clothes  against  the  terrors  of 
thickets,  the  boy  entered  the  autumnal  woods,  bent  on  ravage. 
In  their  depths  was — 

"  One  dear  nook 
Unvisited,  where  not  a  broken  bough 
Drooped  with  its  withered  leaves,  ungracious  sign 
Of  devastation  ;  but  the  hazels  rose 
Tall  and  erect,  with  tempting  clusters  hung 
A  virgin  scene  ! " 


30  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

For  a  time  the  young  deflowerer  watched  his  victim  in  a 
mood  of  perfect  sensuous  satisfaction — 

"  A  little  while  I  stood 
Breathing  with  such  suppression  of  the  heart 
As  joy  delights  in  ;  and  with  wise  restraint 
Voluptuous,  fearless  of  a  rival,  eyed 
The  banquet." 

He  was — 

"  In  that  sweet  mood  when  pleasure  loves  to  play 
Tribute  to  ease  ;  and  of  its  joy  secure, 
The  heart  luxuriates  with  indifferent  things 
Wasting  its  kindliness  on  stocks  and  stones 
And  on  the  vacant  air." 

And  now  the  boy  summons  his  energies  to  do  the  common- 
place thing — 

"  Then  up  I  rose 
And  dragged  to  earth  both  branch  and  bough,  with  crash, 
And  merciless  ravage  ;  and  the  shady  nook 
Of  hazels,  and  the  green  and  mossy  bower, 
Deformed  and  sullied,  patiently  gave  up 
Their  quiet  being." 

So  far,  we  have  a  most  ordinary  situation,  distinguished  only 
by  the  beauty  of  its  presentment.  But  now  mark  what  happens. 
In  the  moment  of  full  sensuous  gratification,  when  the  clusters 
are  at  his  feet,  and  the  ruined  trees  are  quivering  from  the 
robbery,  the  boy  feels — or  is  it  that  the  man,  the  developed 
poet,  reads  his  present  feelings  back  into  the  boy's  ? — a  strange 
compunction.  There  suddenly  dawns  on  his  acquisitive, 
materialistic  soul,  the  vision  of  Nature  as  life — life  which  is 
an  end  in  itself,  and  not  a  mere  instrument  of  human  gratifica- 
tion. He  thinks  of  his  act  not  as  gain,  but  as  injury — some- 
thing that  has  hurt,  something  to  be  resented,  regretted. 

"  Ere  from  the  mutilated  bower  I  turned 
Exulting,  rich  beyond  the  wealth  of  kings, 
I  felt  a  sense  of  pain  when  I  beheld 
The  silent  trees,  and  saw  the  intruding  sky." 

And  so,  recalling  it  all  long  afterwards,  he  exhorts  Dorothy, 
who,  surely,  had  little  need  of  the  exhortation — 

"  Then,  dearest  maiden,  move  along  these  shades, 
In  gentleness  of  heart ;  with  gentle  hand 
Touch — for  there  is  a  spirit  in  the  woods." 


CHILDHOOD  AxND  BOYHOOD  AMONG  THE  LAKES    31 

"  There  is  a  spirit  in  the  zvoods^  This,  which  in  other  poets 
night  be  a  mere  play  of  illusory  fancy,  is,  in  Wordsworth,  a 
iogmatic  statement  of  objective  fact. 

The  same  kind  of  spiritualizing  process  took  place  with 
ichool-companionships.  Common  schoolboys,  like  common 
ichoolmasters,  were  touched  by,  and  became  part  of,  the  unearthly 
ublimity  of  Nature.  "  William  Raincock,  of  Rayrigg,"  was  an 
idept  in  the  art  of  mimicking  owls  by  hooting  through  his 
ingers ;  and  he  died  before  he  was  twelve.  Wordsworth 
dealizes  him  and  his  accomplishment  and  his  fate,  so  that  they 
ire  as  much  part  of  Windermere  as  its  waters  or  its  woods. 

"  There  was  a  Boy  :  ye  knew  him  well,  ye  cliffs 
And  islands  of  Winander  !  " 

Wonderful  as  were  the  effects  of  echoing  sound  which  the 
ad  could  produce,  there  were  moments  when  he  failed,  when — 

"  There  came  a  pause 
Of  silence,  such  as  baffled  his  best  skill !  " 

\t  such  moments  the  Spirit  of  Nature  laid  her  hand  on  him, 
md  play  was  changed  into  poetry — 

"  Then  sometimes,  in  that  silence,  while  he  hung 
Listening,  a  gentle  shock  of  mild  surprise 
Has  carried  far  into  his  heart  the  voice 
Of  mountain-torrents  ;  or  the  visible  scenes 
Would  enter  unawares  into  his  mind 
With  all  its  solemn  imagery,  its  rocks, 
Its  woods,  and  that  uncertain  heaven  received 
Into  the  bosom  of  the  steady  lake." 

And  if  this  trivial  experience  was  replete  with  spiritual 
uggestion  even  to  the  child,  much  more  so  was  the  sight  of 
is  untimely  grave  to  the  poet,  his  friend.  The  Hawkshead 
hurchyard — 

"  Hangs 
Upon  a  slope  above  the  village  school ; 
And,  through  that  churchyard  when  my  way  has  led 
On  summer  evenings,  I  believe,  that  there 
A  long  half-hour  together  I  have  stood 
Mute — looking  at  the  grave  in  which  he  lies  !  " 

In  other  experiences  the  imaginative  and  spiritual  training 
as  more  direct  and  decisive.     The  sense  of  something  behind 


32 


WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 


natural  appearances,  of  a  spiritual  unity  at  once  beautiful,  awful 
and  incomprehensible,  was  born  out  of  one  experience   after 
another.     When  the  boy  was  going  at  night  roimd  the  wood- 
cock-snares  set   by   him   and    his    companions,   he   would   b 
tempted  to  take  more  than  his  own  share,  and  then  he  woulc 
fancy  himself  pursued  by  invisible  feet,  and  the  night-breeze 
would  play  the  detective.     So  might  any  guilty  boy  feel.     Bu  ^ 
not  every  boy,  climbing  the  rocks  to  see  a  raven's  nest  in  broae  P 
daylight,  would  suspect,  as  Wordsworth  did,  the  preternatura  F; 
(shall  we  call  it  ?)  in  the  natural. 


"  While  on  the  perilous  ridge  I  hung  alone. 
With  what  strange  utterance  did  the  loud  dry  wind 
Blow  through  my  ear  !— the  sky  seemed  not  a  sky 
Of  earth— and  with  what  motion  moved  the  clouds  ! " 

Gradually   the    sense   strengthened    of   ^pi^^^^^J^  jl^P^^^^ 


Nature,  of  natural  appearances  as  symbolic  and  prophetic, 
boating  and  skating  scenes  on  Esthwaite  and  Windermere  a 
well   known.      One    summer   evening    the    boy   shot    out 
a  boat  on  Esthwaite  in  defiance  of  rules.     Moonlight  lay  c 

the  water — 

"  Far  above 
Was  nothing  but  the  stars  and  the  gray  sky 

The  consciousness  of  wrong-doing  was  present  but  n 
strong  ;  it  was  an  element,  but  only  one  element,  of  an  emotior 
excitement  in  which  it  disappeared.  In  the  glamour  of  t 
nic^ht  the  boy  made  towards  "a  craggy  ridge"  on  the  horizo, 
suddenly  there  shot  up  behind  it,  as  if  on  the  impulse  of  a  livi 
will  a  higher  height,  a  peak  black  in  the  moonlight.  As 
crrew  in  size  and  definiteness  it  became  a  terrifying  thing ;  a 
at  last  young  Wordsworth  had  to  turn  his  boat  and  go  ba.JI  ^ 
feeling  all  the  while  as  if  "the  grim  shape"  were  following  hi* 
In  serious  mood  he  walked  across  the  meadows  to  Hawkshea 
and  for  days  he  could  not  lose  the  impressions  of  that  night. 

What  were  the  impressions  ?     He  tells  us  ;  but  it  is  not  esW 
to  translate  such  things  into  words   with  their  irritating  ag  1: 
impotent  definiteness.     His  healthy  boy's  brain  was  troub^ 
with  a  sense  of  the  undetermined,  the  unknown  ;  Nature  seen 
to  wear  no  longer  her  simple,  pleasant,  intelligible  features,  ] 


fHI 


IB! 

fer 

F 
lb 


CHILDHOOD  AND  BOYHOOD  AMONG  THE  LAKES    33 

to  be  haunted  by  "  huge  and  mighty  forms,"  gigantic  presences, 
alive,  but  not  with  the  life  of  men. 

So  it  seemed  at  the  moment ;  but,  years  afterwards,  he  came 
to  know,  and  to  be  able  to  express  better,  what  was  happening 
to  him  at  such  times.  He  came  to  realize  that  this  vague  feeling 
of  ghostliness  among  the  things  of  sense  was  the  childish  appre- 
hension of  nothing  less  than  Deity  in  Nature,  of  the  "  Wisdom 
and  Spirit  of  the  Universe,"  the  "  Soul  that  is  the  eternity  of 
Thought.'*  He  realized  that  such  experiences  had  greater 
magnitude  and  significance  than  they  seemed  to  have,  that  they 
were  part  of  a  training  of  which  it  was  not  ridiculous,  but 
perfectly  fitting  to  speak  in  language  grandiloquent  and  sublime. 
He  realized  that  Nature — spiritual,  alive,  one — was  in  such 
things  beginning  to  train,  discipline,  purify  him.  The  ex- 
periences were  to  be  understood  as  constituting  intercourse, 
fellowship,  of  person  with  person  ;  fellowship  in  which  there 
was  both  intelligence  and  passion — 


I 


"  Wisdom  and  Spirit  of  the  universe  ! 
Thou  Soul,  that  art  the  eternity  of  thought  ! 
That  givest  to  forms  and  images  a  breath 
And  everlasting  motion  !  not  in  vain. 
By  day  or  star-light,  thus  from  my  first  dawn 
Of  childhood  didst  thou  intertwine  for  me 
The  passions  that  build  up  our  human  soul  ; 
Not  with  the  mean  and  vulgar  works  of  Man, 
But  with  high  objects,  with  enduring  things — 
With  life  and  nature — purifying  thus 
The  elements  of  feeling  and  of  thought, 
And  sanctifying  by  such  discipline 
Both  pain  and  fear,  until  we  recognize 
A  grandeur  in  the  beatings  of  the  heart." 

As  time  went  on,  the  fellowship  between  the  schoolboy  and 
Nature  became  so  frequent  as  to  be  almost  habitual — 

"  Mine  was  it  in  the  fields  both  day  and  night. 
And  by  the  waters,  all  the  summer  long." 

It  came  through  ordinary  experiences,  outings,  amusements — 

"  Oft  amid  those  fits  of  vulgar  joy 
Which,  through  all  seasons,  on  a  child's  pursuits 
Are  prompt  attendants,  'mid  that  giddy  bliss 
Which,  like  a  tempest,  works  along  the  blood 

D 


34  WORDSWORTH  AND   HIS  CIRCLE 

And  is  forgotten ;  even  then  I  felt 
Gleams  like  the  flashing  of  a  shield  ; — the  earth 
And  common  face  of  Nature  spoke  to  me 
Rememberable  things." 

Yet  the  boy  became  neither  a  prig  nor  a  sentimentalist.  He 
skated  none  the  less  vigorously  that  a  melancholy  note  was 
sent  by  the  hills  to  mix  with  the  tumult  on  the  ice,  or  that  he 
occasionally  paused,  "  reclining  back  upon  his  heels,"  to  watch 
the  solemn  fall  of  night.  The  sense  of  Nature's  presence  lost 
its  terror ;  he  felt  it  as  a  play  of  life,  life  like  his  own,  on  all 
things  ;  it  gave  comfort  and  strength  now,  as  well  as  awe. 

"The  surface  of  the  universal  earth,"  worked,  "like  a  sea" 
"  with  triumph  and  delight,  with  hope  and  fear." 

All  experience  remained  natural ;  only  more  and  more  it 
became  suffused  with  a  purer  essence,  transfigured  by  a  higher 
light.     The  most  normally  sociable  of  boys,  he  began  to  feel — 

"  The  self-sufificing  power  of  Solitude." 

The  feeling  of,  and  belief  in,  Nature's  personality  or  quasi- 
personality  became  both  deeper  and  stronger  before  Wordsworth 
left  the  vale  of  Esthwaite.  Hitherto  Nature  had  been  "interve- 
nient "  and  "  secondary  ; "  a  time  came  when  she  was  sought  "  for 
her  own  sake."  But  the  very  importance  of  this  change  made  it 
all  the  harder  to  express  clearly.  In  trying  to  express  it,  Words- 
worth had  to  become  a  "  metaphysical "  poet  in  very  truth,  and 
to  use  language  which  suggests  that  idealistic  philosophy  which 
was  growing  up  contemporaneously  in  Germany.  If  it  was  hare 
for  the  poet  to  express  his  experience,  it  is  equally  hard  for  the 
reader  to  put  it  into  any  other  words.  What  Wordswortl 
learned  about  Nature  in  his  school  days  came  by  way  oi feeling 
rather  than  thought ;  and  one  can  only  suggest,  adumbrate 
what  one  feels.  But  his  philosophy  seems  to  resolve  itself  int( 
something  like  the  following : — Nature  is  subjective  as  well  a 
objective,  internal  as  well  as  external :  what  we  call  the  sou 
in  us  has  a  counterpart  in  Nature.  Or  we  may  put  it  otherwise 
and  say  that  Nature  is  a  display  of  spirit,  to  which  our  individuc 
spirits  contribute  something.  The  result  of  all  this  action  c 
intercourse,  or  whatever  it  may  be  called,  is  a  pleasurable  c 
even  rapturous  sense  of  correspondence  or  fitness,  the  mutuc 
recognition,  as  it  were,  of  parts  in  a  whole.     This   delightfi 


CHILDHOOD  AND  BOYHOOD  AMONG  THE  LAKES    35 

or  awe-inspiring  sense  of  fitness  between  the  mind  and  the 
"external"  world — a  correspondence  testifying  to  the  unity  of 
Nature — is  a  cardinal  part  of  Wordsworth's  poetic  philosophy. 
He  felt,  when  he  was  ten  years  old,  what,  in  retrospect,  he  could 
describe  as — 

"  Those  hallowed  and  pure  motions  of  the  sense 
Which  seem,  in  their  simplicity,  to  own 
An  intellectual  charm  ;  that  calm  delight 
Which,  if  I  err  not,  surely  must  belong 
To  those  first-born  affinities  that  fit 
Our  new  existence  to  existing  things, 
And,  in  our  dawn  of  being,  constitute 
The  bond  of  union  between  life  and  joy." 

Already,  as  a  mere  happy  and  ordinary  schoolboy,  he  was 
dimly  recognizing  himself  as  bound  by  a  kind  of  marriage  tie  to 
the  world  of  men  and  things,  and  beginning  to  find  warrant  for 
his  greatest  verse  to  come. 

"  For  the  discerning  intellect  of  Man, 
When  wedded  to  this  goodly  universe 
In  love  and  holy  passion," 

IS  to  be  able  to  regain  the  lost  Paradise. 

"  I,  long  before  the  blissful  hour  arrives, 
Would  chant,  in  lonely  peace,  the  spousal  verse 
Of  this  great  consummation  : — And,  by  words 
Which  speak  of  nothing  more  than  what  we  are, 
Would  I  arouse  the  sensual  from  their  sleep 
Of  Death,  and  win  the  vacant  and  the  vain 
To  noble  raptures  ;  while  my  voice  proclaims 
How  exquisitely  the  individual  Mind 


to  the  External  World 
Is  fitted :— and  how  exquisitely,  too — 
Theme  this  but  little  heard  of  among  men — 
The  external  world  is  fitted  to  the  Mind  : 
And  the  creation  (by  no  lower  name 
Can  it  be  called)  which  they  with  blended  might 
Accomplish : — this  is  our  high  argument." 

In  all  this  mere  feeling  was  continually  passing  into  intelli- 
'^ence,  and  every  kind  of  knowledge  became  a  source  of  poetry. 
Society  was  to  him  "  as  sweet  as  solitude  "  by — 


36  WORDSWORTH  AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

"  Gentle  agitations  of  the  mind 
From  manifold  distinctions,  difference 
Perceived  in  things,  where,  to  the  unwatchful  eye, 
No  difference  is." 

If  this  language  has  the  unintelligible  quality  which  inevit- 
ably belongs  to  mysticism,  it  has  also  an  intense  reality;  it 
expresses  the  kind  of  life-long  conviction  which  makes  religions 
and  supports  martyrs.  Wordsworth  himself  recognized  these 
boyish  experiences  as  religious  ;  he  used  about  them  words 
specially  belonging  to  the  vocabulary  of  religion  ;  he  spoke  of 
"holy"  calm,  of  communion,  of  faith.  Nor  was  his  sense  of 
the  "creative  "  function  of  his  own  "  imagination,"  his  conviction 
that  some  of  what  he  worshipped  in  Nature  came  from  within 
himself,  less  definite  than  it  was  bold. 

"  An  auxiliar  light 
Came  from  my  mind,  which  on  the  setting  sun 
Bestowed  new  splendour  ;  the  melodious  birds, 
The  fluttering  breezes,  fountains  that  run  on 
Murmuring  so  sweetly  in  themselves,  obeyed 
A  like  dominion,  and  the  midnight  storm 
Grew  darker  in  the  presence  of  my  eye  : 
Hence  my  obeisance,  my  devotion  hence, 
And  hence  my  transport." 

The  influence  of  Hawkshead  and  the  vale  of  Esthwaite  did 
not  stop  with  Wordsworth's  school  days.  He  came  back  in 
summer  vacations  during  his  Cambridge  time.    He  saw  again — 

"  The  snow-white  church  *  upon  the  hill 
Sit  like  a  throndd  Lady." 

He  went  to  see  the  dear  old  dame  with  whom  he  had  lodged  in 
the  little  town;  the  terrier  was  still  there  to  join  him  in  his 
walks.  Human  sympathies  which  he  had  not  felt  before  were 
now  astir  within  him  ;  not  only  the  lake  and  the  hills,  the  sky, 
the  fields,  and  the  groves,  but  the  peasant  folk  now  drew  forth 
his  love.  He  began  to  embrace  humanity  in  his  conception  of 
Nature.  His  outlook  became  more  altruistic  ;  a  "joy  in  widest 
commonalty  spread,"  rather  than  an  individual  luxury.  Yet  it 
by  no  means  lost  its  vague  mystical  grandeur,  its  unspeakable 
incommunicable  privacy. 

*  It  was  then  a  whitewashed  building. 


CHILDHOOD  AND  BOYHOOD  AMONG  THE  LAKES   37 

"  When  first  I  made 
Once  more  the  circuit  of  our  little  lake, 
If  ever  happiness  hath  lodged  with  man, 
That  day  consummate  happiness  was  mine, 
Wide-spreading,  steady,  calm,  contemplative. 
The  sun  was  set,  or  setting,  when  I  left 
Our  cottage  door,  and  evening  soon  brought  on 
A  sober  hour,  not  winning  or  serene. 
For  cold  and  raw  the  air  was,  and  untuned  : 
But  as  a  face  we  love  is  sweetest  then 
When  sorrow  damps  it,  or,  whatever  look 
It  chance  to  wear,  is  sweetest  if  the  heart 
Have  fulness  in  herself;  even  so  with  me 
It  fared  that  evening.     Gently  did  my  soul 
Put  off  her  veil,  and  self-transmuted  stood 
Naked,  as  in  the  presence  of  her  God." 

One  little  scene  marks  a  kind  of  climax  of  this  phase  of  the 
poet's  experience.  During  these  vacation  days  the  young  man 
was  far  from  being  wholly  satisfied  with  himself;  what  he  looked 
back  upon  as  frivolity  and  triviality  mixed  with  the  high  delights 
of  a  poetic  soul.  Ordinary  social  pleasures — dancing,  games, 
and^the  rest  of  it — came  to  "depress  zeal"  and  "damp  yearn- 
ings." He  felt  himself  growing  weaker  instead  of  stronger  ;  his 
very  garments  seemed  to  prey  on  his  strength.  Nor  did  social 
amusements  make  him  unselfish  ;  on  the  contrary,  they — 

"  Stopped  the  quiet  stream 
Of  self-forgetfulness." 

Yet  out  of  one  time  which  the  poet's  austerity  might  have 
condemned  as  specially  wasteful  in  its  frivolity,  came  an  act  of 
decisive  dedication  to  the  unseen  and  eternal.  Somewhere  (not 
far  from  Hawkshead,  and  not  far  from  a  view-point  over  the 
sea)  the  young  Wordsworth  had  been  at  a  late  and  long  dance. 

"  'Mid  a  throng 
Of  maids  and  youths,  old  men,  and  matrons  staid 
A  medley  of  all  tempers,  I  had  passed 
The  night  in  dancing,  gaiety,  and  mirth. 
With  din  of  instruments  and  shuffling  feet. 
And  glancing  forms,  and  tapers  glittering. 
And  unaimed  prattle  flying  up  and  down  ; 
Spirits  upon  the  stretch,  and  here  and  there 
Slight  shocks  of  young  love-liking  interspersed, 
Whose  transient  pleasure  mounted  to  the  head, 
And  tingled  through  the  veins." 


38  WORDSWORTH  AND   HIS  CIRCLE 

Then  came  the  end  of  the  ball,  and  the  untimely  passing  out 
into  the  quiet  of  the  early  morning.  It  was  after  cockcrow  ;  the 
east  was  alive.  As  the  youth  walked  home  the  sun  rose ;  the 
sea  laughed  in  the  distance  ;  the  mountains  were  as  "  bright  as 
the  clouds."  A  more  ordinary  mind  than  Wordsworth's  would 
have  halted  on  the  commonplace  contrast  between  the  scenes 
inside  and  outside  the  ballroom,  between  the  tired  spirit  of  the 
night  sinking  back  among  extinguished  lights  and  exhausted 
fripperies,  and  the  glorious  young  day,  leaping  up  like  a  giant 
refreshed  with  wine.  A  more  conventional  moralist  would  have 
vexed  himself  that  the  night  had  hindered  him  from  the  best 
enjoyment  of  the  day.  It  was  otherwise  with  Wordsworth.  To 
the  high  mood  of  that  morning  the  night  contributed  as  much 
as  the  day.  There  was  nothing  to  be  ashamed  of,  nothing  to 
regret  The  night  and  the  morning  made  up  one  great  expe- 
rience, one  moment  of  destiny.  It  was  the  accolade  of  the 
knightly  poet. 

"  To  the  brim 
My  heart  was  full ;  I  made  no  vows,  but  vows 
Were  then  made  for  me  ;  bond  unknown  to  me 
Was  given,  that  I  should  be,  else  sinning  greatly 
A  dedicated  Spirit.'' 

So  much  had  come  of  the  schooltime  among  the  mountains 
and  the  lakes.  And  it  was  their  work.  They  had  made  their 
poet. 


CHAPTER   III 
THE  WEST   COUNTRY 

AMONG  the  pleasant  English  shires  none  is  pleasanter, 
none  richer,  than  Somerset.  Nor  is  there  any  more 
various  or  more  fertile  in  surprises.  Hill,  plain,  and  sea  "  bear 
each  an  orchestral  part "  in  the  general  character  and  effect. 
In  the  north-west  the  county  is  flat  plain,  bounded  by  the 
Bristol  Channel.  Beyond  wide  expanses,  relieved  from  dulness 
by  cheerful  apple-orchards,  you  guess  rather  than  see  the 
gleaming  streaks  of  sand  and  silver  ;  you  may  be  aware  of 
a  hazy  sail  on  the  horizon  ;  if  the  air  is  clear,  you  will  see,  from 
miles  inland,  the  irregular  outlines  of  Steepholm  and  Flatholm, 
the  rocky  islets  that  stand  at  the  outlet  of  Severn  Sea ;  and  at 
night,  as  you  look  from  any  high  ground,  the  sky  will  be 
reddened  by  the  glare  of  the  furnaces  of  South  Wales. 

Bridgwater,  with  its  long  streets,  its  fine  church  and  its 
busy  markets,  stands  on  the  little  river  Parret,  which  sinks 
sluggishly  north-westward  from  the  Jurassic  uplands  near 
Yeovil  and  the  Dorset  border.  Its  course  is  through  marshy 
alluvium  ;  and  a  poor  muddy  concern  it  looks  at  Bridgwater, 
though  the  tide  is  plainly  felt  there,  and  good-sized  vessels 
are  in  the  ooze  on  either  side  of  the  bridge,  waiting  for  high 
water.  But,  on  the  whole,  the  town  is  beyond  the  flats 
through  which  the  traveller's  course  from  Bristol  has  lain, 
beyond  the  cornfields  and  orchards  of  the  present,  the  pathless 
wastes  of  Alfred's  and  even  of  Monmouth's  days.  West  of  it 
the  ground  rises  into  pleasant  fertile  upland  of  New  Red 
Sandstone,  to  merge,  a  few  miles  further  on,  in  the  much 
older  Devonian  strata,  which  stretch,  with  only  one  small 
interruption,  across  Exmoor  to  the  Atlantic  shore. 

The  high  ground    in    which    the    Parret    rises    forms   the 

39 


40  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

boundary  between  Somerset  and  Dorset,  and,  to  the  westward, 
makes  a  background  for  the  scenery  of  eastern  Devon.  The 
whole  region,  dividing  the  Bristol  from  the  English  Channel, 
is  the  heart  of  the  "west  country,"  a  land  of  cider  and  the 
letter  "z";  soft  and  moist  in  climate ;  abounding  in  orchards; 
its  peasantry  without  the  shrewdness  of  the  north,  but  rich  in 
qualities  of  the  heart,  due,  perhaps,  to  the  Celtic  strain  ;  gracious, 
neighbourly,  civil  folk,  with  a  kindly  greeting  for  the  stranger, 
but  with  a  deep  local  patriotism.  Remote  and  primitive  the 
west  country  remains,  even  in  these  days ;  perhaps,  in  a  sense, 
even  more  so,  in  spite  of  railways,  than  it  was  when  Words- 
worth and  Coleridge  made  it  a  land  of  the  Muses. 

For,  as  a  glance  at  the  map  shows,  it  is  the  natural  play- 
ground and  rural  outlet  and  refuge  of  Bristol ;  and  Bristol,  a 
century  since,  was  relatively  a  more  important  place  than  it 
is  now.  It  was  still  the  second  city  in  the  kingdom,  the 
counterpart  in  the  west  of  London  in  the  east ;  for  in  those 
days  the  industrial  importance  of  the  north  had  hardly  arisen  : 
the  greatness  of  Manchester,  the  greatness  of  Liverpool,  lay  in 
the  future,  though  a  future  close  at  hand.  Moreover,  was 
not  Bath  close  to  Bristol — Bath  with  its  pump-room  and  its 
waters,  the  chief  cynosure  of  eighteenth-century  fashionable 
idleness  and  mild  invalidism  ?  And  had  not  Bristol  its  own 
"  hot-wells,"  whereof  we  read  in  Humphrey  Clinker  and  Evelina^ 
to  which  humbler  people  resorted  } 

Among  the  personalities  who  adorn  the  annals  of  the  great 
Atlantic  port  in  the  eighteenth  century,  a  few  stand  out 
conspicuous.  One  was  Edward  Colston  (whom  the  annual 
"  Colston  banquets "  commemorate  to  this  day),  the  philan- 
thropic West  India  merchant  who  represented  the  city  in 
Parliament  in  the  last  days  of  Queen  Anne's  reign  and  did  so 
much  for  Bristol's  highest  good.  A  more  famous  representative 
was  Edmund  Burke,  who,  though  an  outsider,  was  elected  for 
Bristol  in  1774,  and  sat  for  the  city  until  1780.  It  was  as 
member  for  Bristol  that  Burke  made  his  great  speeches  on  the 
American  question  ;  and  it  was  to  the  Sheriffs  of  Bristol  that  he 
wrote,  in  1777,  a  letter  almost  as  great,  in  which  he  laid  claim  j 
to  the  full  sympathy  of  the  citizens,  and  paid  them  a  compli- 
ment of  which  they  might  well  be  proud.  "  By  the  favour  of 
my  fellow-citizens,"  he  wrote,  "  I  am  the  representative  of  an 


C;! 


THE   WEST   COUNTRY  41 

honest,  well-ordered,  virtuous  city ;  of  a  people  who  preserve 
more  of  the  original  English  simplicity  and  purity  of  manners 
than  perhaps  any  other.  You  possess  among  you  several  men 
and  magistrates  of  large  and  cultivated  understandings  ;  fit 
for  any  employment  in  any  sphere."  Yet  this  eminent 
constituency  was  on  the  eve  of  quarrelling  with  Burke,  and,  a 
little  later,  spurning  him  altogether.  In  1778,  the  selfishness  of 
the  Bristol  merchants  made  them  oppose  Burke's  noble  efforts 
for  the  liberation  of  Irish  industry ;  the  city  was  in  a  state  of 
such  "  miserable  distraction,"  that  Burke,  knowing  that  defeat 
was  certain,  refused  to  submit  himself  to  its  suffrages,  and 
humbly  and  respectfully,  and  for  ever,  took  his  leave  of  the 
sheriffs,  the  candidates,  and  the  electors.  This  time  it  was  the 
Protestantism  of  Bristol  which  resented  Burke's  support  of 
the  mitigation  of  Roman  Catholic  disabilities. 

Burke's  chief  friend  and  correspondent  in  his  Bristol 
constituency  was  Richard  Champion,  the  inventor  of  the  famous 
"Bristol  China."  Hannah  More,  the  "improver"  of  so  many 
occasions,  and  a  larger  figure,  perhaps,  in  English  life  than  we 
realize,  lived  and  worked  close  to  Bristol. 

To  the  lover  of  literature,  however,  more  interesting  than 
any  of  those  names  are  certain  comparatively  obscure  in- 
habitants, whose  fortunes  were  linked  with  the  fortunes  of 
English  poetry  at  a  great  crisis  of  its  history.  There  was,  for 
instance,  Joseph  Cottle  the  bookseller  and  publisher,  whose  enter- 
prise and  literary  sympathy  helped  the  genius  of  Wordsworth, 
Coleridge,  and  Southey  forth  into  the  outer  air.  Of  him  we 
shall  hear  again.  Not  so  eminent  as  Cottle  was  another  Bristol 
man  named  Robert  Southey,  a  countryman  of  West  Somerset 
by  birth,  who  became  a  linen-draper  in  the  great  town,  with  a 
hare  for  his  shop  sign,  and  the  father  of  a  younger  Robert 
Southey,  destined  to  fame. 

Neither  Southey  the  elder  nor  his  wife  was  interesting  ;  but 
the  young  Robert  had  an  ambitious  aunt  who  insisted  on  the 
boy's  being  sent  to  school  at  Westminster,  and  after  that  to 
Balliol  College,  Oxford.  Even  at  school  Southey  had  been 
drinking  at  the  sources  of  Romanticism,  and  his  head  was  full 
of  Rousseau  when  he  went  up  to  Balliol  in  1792.  His  sympathies 
were  as  revolutionary  as  Wordsworth's,  and  Gibbon  had  taught 
him  to  be  a  sceptic  in  religion.    Instead  of  "  minding  his  books,'* 


/ 


42  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

as  the  authorities  expected  him  to  do,  he  planned  epic  poems  ; 
and  meditated,  with  kindred  enthusiasts,  emigratirn  to  virgin 
soil  in  America,  and  the  plantation  of  a  republican  settlement 
there,  where  perfect  social  equality  might  be  realized  without 
the  lurid  horrors  that  were  spoiling  the  French  Revolution. 
One  day  in  the  summer  term  of  1794,  there  appeared  in  Oxford 
and  in  Southey's  rooms  a  young  man  from  Southey's  west 
country  though  not  from  Bristol.  He  was  a  strange-looking 
youth,  with  masses  of  long  black  hair  parted  Miltonically  in  the 
middle,  and  so  emphasizing  the  expanse  of  a  noble  brow  ;  open, 
luminous  grey  eyes  ;  and  a  curiously  large  mouth,  which,  with 
its  parted  lips,  looked  weak  in  repose,  but  which,  when  it 
became  the  agent  of  the  intelligence  bespoken  by  brow  and 
eye,  uttered  speech  even  then  unparalleled  in  its  radiant  fulness. 
It  was  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge,  younger  son  of  the  quaint 
pedantic  vicar  of  Ottery  St.  Mary  in  Devon,  who  was  still  an 
undergraduate  at  Jesus  College,  Cambridge,  but  had  run  away 
and  enlisted  in  the  King's  Dragoons,  from  which  escapade  he 
had  been  some  months  returned.  Coleridge  had  a  companion 
with  him  with  whom  he  was  on  his  way  to  begin  a  walking-tour 
in  Wales  ;  and  they  had  an  introduction' to  Southey.  A  young 
man  who  would  run  away  from  Cambridge  to  enlist ;  a  young 
man  of  rare  originality,  full  of  enthusiasm,  and  copious  of 
speech,  was  the  sort  likely  to  fall  in  with  Southey's  American 
dream,  and  so  it  proved.  They  left  Oxford  together  ;  and,  when 
Coleridge's  Welsh  tour  was  over,  he  came  to  Bristol,  and  he  and 
Southey  walked  about  Somersetshire,  and  talked  their  scheme 
of  Rousseauish  Transatlantic  equality  — "  Pantisocracy,"  the 
rule  of  all  and  sundry,  was  to  be  its  name — into  definite  shape. 
The  shape  was  very  definite  indeed.  Twelve  gentlemen  sym- 
metrically matched  with  twelve  ladies  vvere  to  embark  for 
America  in  the  following  spring.  They  were  to  plant  them- 
selves on  a  delightful  spot  in  the  "back  settlements";  each 
gentleman  was  to  provide  £12^,  to  work  two  or  three  hours  a 
day,  to  hold  any  political  or  religious  opinions  he  liked,  and  to 
be  free  to  quit  the  Commonwealth  at  any  time.  The  produce 
of  the  labour  was  to  be  held  communistically,  and  there  were 
to  be  plenty  of  books  for  the  improvement  of  the  ample  leisure. 
The  twelve  ladies  were  a  little  difficult  to  dispose  of.  The 
arrangements  contemplated  were  not  "  Platonic/'  in  the  popular 


THE    WEST  COUNTRY  43 

sense  of  that  word  ;  for  the  education  of  children  was  carefully 
provided  for.  Apparently  it  was  left  undecided  whether  and 
how  matrimonial  plans  were  to  be  made  on  a  communistic 
basis.     Such  ideas  grew  out  of  the  west  country  in  those  days. 

A  practical  step  towards  the  realization  of  Pantisocracy  was 
the  engagement  of  Southey  and  Coleridge  respectively  to  two 
sisters,  Edith  and  Sarah  Fricker,  daughters  of  a  Bristol  mer- 
chant. There  was  a  third  daughter,  Mary  Fricker;  and  she 
was  paired  ofif  with  a  third  Pantisocrat,  Robert  Lovell,  the  son 
of  another  Bristol  tradesman,  a  Quaker,  who  joined  Southey  in 
his  first  volume  of  verse,  and  died  a  year  or  two  after.  The 
community  were  to  start  in  April,  1795  ;  that  had  been  settled 
during  autumn  walks  in  pleasant  Somerset  and  conferences  at 
Southey's  aunt's  house  at  Bristol ;  but  when  April  came,  nobody 
was  ready  to  start.  Coleridge  had  gone  to  Cambridge  to  take 
his  degree,  and  then  to  London  to  write  sonnets  in  the  Morning 
Chronicle,  During  this  time  he  seemed  to  forget  all  about 
Pantisocracy  and  Sarah  Fricker.  In  January,  Southey  dug 
him  out  of  London  and  carried  him  back  to  Bristol,  where  his 
interest  in  both  revived.  Southey  and  he  lived  together,  and 
with  them  was  another  young  Pantisocrat,  Robert  Burnett,  son 
of  a  Somerset  farmer.  Cottle,  the  bookseller,  was  very  amiable 
and  helpful,  and  there  were  all  sorts  of  literary  and  other  plans. 
But  the  miniimim  ;f  125  necessary  from  each  gentleman  of  the 
twelve — and  where  were  the  twelve  ? — was  not  forthcoming  ; 
and  so,  when  April  arrived,  no  start  was  made ;  and,  as  the 
year  1795  grew  older,  it  became  evident  that  no  start  ever 
would  be  made.  At  close  quarters,  Southey  found  Coleridge's 
wonderful  talk  a  trifle  fatiguing ;  the  Pantisocrats  had  difficulty 
in  paying  even  for  their  Bristol  lodgings  ;  and  at  last  Southey 
went  off  to  Bath  disillusioned  as  to  Pantisocracy,  and  resolved 
to  follow  conventional  courses.  Poor  Coleridge  was  left  lament- 
ing and  grumbling  at  Bristol.  Matrimony  was  the  only  solid 
result  of  the  Pantisocratic  negotiations.  Before  the  year  was 
out,  Sarah  Fricker  had  become  Mrs.  Coleridge,  and  Edith 
Fricker  Mrs.  Southey,  in  St.  Mary  Redcliffe's  Church. 

While  Coleridge  and  Southey  were  "digging,"  as  modern 
Oxonians  say,  together  in  those  summer  days  at  Bristol,  what 
was  Wordsworth  doing?  Wordsworth  knew  nothing  of  Cole- 
ridge  or  of  Southey ;   but  he  too — so  Destiny  would  have  it 


44  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

— was  coming  to  Bristol  and  the  West  country.  He  had  gone 
straight  from  Hawkshead  to  Cam^jridge  in  1787,  where  he 
passed  through  the  usual  course  at  St.  John's  College.  The 
University  did  little  that  was  definitely  formative  for  Words- 
worth ;  it  sheltered  his  growth  and  supplied  his  meditative 
imagination  with  some  themes ;  but  neither  its  prescribed 
studies  nor  its  friendships  counted  for  much  in  his  life.  He 
learned  more  in  vacation  rambles ;  immeasurably  more  in 
London,  and  on  his  second  and  fateful  visit  to  France  in 
1791-2.  For  Wordsworth  the  years  between  1792  and  1796 
were  very  critical.  He  had  been  away  from  Cambridge  more 
than  four  years ;  he  had  had  his  stimulating  and  disturbing 
time  in  France ;  he  was  face  to  face  with  the  imperious  neces- 
sities of  bread  and  butter.  He  intended,  indeed,  to  be  a  poet ; 
but  the  amount  of  bread  and  butter  which  can  be  made  out  of 
poetry  such  a.s  An  Evening-  Walk  or  Descriptive  Sketches  cannot 
be  very  satisfying  in  any  conceivable  condition  of  appetite, 
either  for  poetry  or  for  bread  and  butter.  It  would  have  been 
natural  to  take  Orders,  as  his  brother  Christopher  afterwards 
did  ;  but  he  did  not  hear  the  call,  without  which  he  was  too 
conscientious  to  dare  to  take  such  a  step.  In  fact,  in  those 
days,  though  far  from  the  Unitarianism  of  Coleridge,  the 
Deism,  or  whatever  it  may  have  been,  of  Southey,  though  he 
could  never,  probably,  have  been  turned  into  a  Pantisocrat, 
Wordsworth  was  much  of  a  rebel ;  he  was  ashamed  of  his 
country,  or  at  least  of  the  Government  of  it ;  he  felt  as  if  his 
spiritual  beliefs  were  built  on  the  sand.  For  a  time  he 
steadied  himself  on  what  the  Revolutionists  called  "Reason," 
conceived  as  intelligence  acting  without  disturbance  by  feeling. 
Pleasing  himself  with  no  childish  Utopias  such  as  filled  the 
dreams  of  Southey  and  Coleridge,  he  tried  to  construct  abstract 
social  ideals.  He  began  hy  anatomizi7zg  the  frufne  of  social  life, 
to  use  his  own  phrase ;  he  questioned  and  cross-questioned 
everything,  expecting  that  everything  would  prove  itself;  and 
finding  that  nothing  would,  he — 

"Yielded  up  moral  questions  in  despair." 
A  man  in  this  frame  of  mind  is  not  fit  to  take  Orders ;  nor 
is  he  very  fit  to  succeed   in   anything,  unless,  indeed,  he  can 
identify  himself  wholly  with  activities  that  are  entirely  practi- 
cal ;  and  Wordsworth  wanted  to  be  a  poet ! 


THE   WEST   COUNTRY  45 

He  took  refuge  in  walking-tours  and  looked  out  for  tutor- 
ships. In  one  of  the  walking-tours,  in  1793,  ^^  visited  the 
Wye ;  and,  if  we  may  trust  his  account  of  his  mood  written 
five  years  later,  he  was  still  quick  with  the  passionate  feeling  for 
Nature  which  had  marked  his  boyhood.     He  sang  in  1798 — 

"  I  cannot  paint 
What  then  I  was.     The  sounding  cataract 
Haunted  me  like  a  passion  :  the  tall  rock, 
The  mountain,  and  the  deep  and  gloomy  wood, 
Their  colours  and  their  forms,  were  then  to  me 
An  appetite." 

In  the  course  of  this  same  expedition  he  went  up  the  Wye 
to  Goodrich,  where,  in  the  courtyard  of  the  castle,  he  met  the 
"little  cottage-girl,"  whose  "  beauty  made  him  glad,"  with  whom 
he  chatted,  and  about  whom,  in  the  annus  viirabilis^  i/QS,  he 
was  to  have  the  lovely  afterthought  which  we  know  as  We  are 
Seven,  1794  was  the  same  loose,  desultory  kind  of  year,  made 
up  of  walking-tours,  a  little  teaching,  some  poetizing  and  much 
meditating,  while  the  future  was  as  uncertain  as  ever.  The 
deepest  cause  of  the  unrest  and  purposelessness,  we  may  be 
sure,  was  the  "despair"  in  which  he  had  "yielded  up  moral 
questions."  While  relations  and  friends  saw  only  want  of 
openings  and  slackness  of  energy,  while  his  sister  Dorothy  was 
concerned  only  about  William's  want  of  employment,  William 
was  wholly  preoccupied  with  the  evolution  of  the  French 
drama  ;  he  could  not  dissociate  from  it  that  English  individuality 
of  his  which  called  out  for  a  career,  or  at  least  an  income. 

Part  of  the  scepticism  which  was  numbing  him  came,  not 
from  any  infection  of  French  atheism,  but  from  loss  of  faith  in 
the  revolutionary  movement.  The  first  jar  had  been  given  to 
his  nature  by  the  hostility  of  England  to  France :  soon  he  was 
jarred  again  by  the  insolent  aggressiveness  of  the  French  arms. 
He  had  rapid  fluctuations  of  feeling.  One  summer  day,  in 
1794,  he  was  walking  across  the  sands  which,  at  low  water, 
make  firm  footing  beyond  the  mouth  of  the  Leven,  between 
Ulverston  and  Grange.  The  sands  and  shallow  waters  of  the 
estuary  were  alive  with  pleasure-seekers,  with  guides  to  keep 
them  from  treacherous  places ;  overhead  was  the  plenitude  of 
summer  light  in  serenest  weather.     Wordsworth  was  near  the 


46  WORDSWORTH   AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

scenes  of  his  childhood,  and  the  luxury  of  pensive  reminiscence 
came  on  him.  In  the  morning  he  had  stood  by  ihe  grave  of 
his  Hawkshead  schoolmaster,  William  Taylor,  in  Cartm^ell 
churchyard  ;  and  he  reflected  with  how  much  pleasure  Taylor 
would  have  greeted  his  old  pupil  as  a  poet.  Suddenly,  and  by 
a  strange  hap,  the  vast  issues  of  the  great  world  broke  in  on 
the  sweet  egoistic  trance.  The  pedestrian  was  close  to  the 
pleasure-seekers  when  he  heard  one  of  them  say,  Robespierre  is 
dead !  At  the  shock  of  this  news  Wordsworth's  faith  in  Provi- 
dence felt  strong  once  more  ;  and  as  he  walked  along  he  hailed, 
in  not  very  good  blank  verse,  the  coming  of  "  golden  times,"  in 
which  the  Revolution,  purged  of  the  Terror,  would — 

"  March  firmly  towards  righteousness  and  peace." 

And  so  "  interrupted  by  uneasy  bursts  of  exultation,"  he  went 
on  his  way. 

During  the  months  in  which  Southey  and  Coleridge  were 
planning  their  Pantisocracy  in  the  west  country,  Wordsworth 
was  much  among  the  Lakes.  It  was  good  for  him  to  be  there  ; 
for  nothing,  save  one  other  thing,  was  so  restorative  to  his  soul 
as  the  northern  Paradise.  And  now  that  other  thing  also  was 
his  ;  for  now  he  had  the  frequent,  almost  constant,  companion- 
ship of  Dorothy.  Since  the  break-up  of  the  Cockermouth 
home,  she  had  lived,  partly  with  her  cousins,  the  Rawsons,  near 
Halifax,  and  much  with  her  mother's  brother  Canon  Cookson 
at  Windsor,  and  at  his  living  of  Forncett  in  Norfolk.  The 
dream  of  her  life  was  to  live  with  William.  When  he  was 
restored  to  her,  after  Cambridge  and  France,  she  delighted  in 
him  as  much  as  she  had  done  when  they  were  children.  At  the 
Christmas  of  1792  they  were  together  at  Forncett,  and  tasted 
the  joy  of  a  perfect  companionship  of  the  kind  which  only 
brothers  and  sisters  may  know.  "  I  cannot  describe,"  she  wrote, 
"  his  attention  to  me.  There  was  no  pleasure  that  he  would  not 
have  given  up  with  joy  for  half  an  hour's  conversation  with  me. 
Every  day,  as  soon  as  we  rose  from  dinner,  we  used  to  pace  the 
gravel  walk  in  the  garden  till  six  o'clock.  Nothing  but  rain  or 
snow  prevented  our  taking  this  walk.  Often  have  I  gone  out, 
when  the  keenest  north  wind  has  been  whistling  amongst  the 
trees  over  our  head,  and  have  paced  that  walk  in  the  garden, 
which  will  always  be  dear  to  me — from  the  remembrance  of 


THE   WEST  COUNTRY  47 

those  very  long  conversations  I  have  had  upon  it  supported  by 
my  brother's  arm.  Ah  !  I  never  thought  of  the  cold  when  he 
was  with  me.  I  am  as  heretical  as  yourself  in  my  opinions 
concerning  love  and  friendship.  I  am  very  sure  that  love  will 
never  bind  me  closer  to  any  human  being  than  friendship  binds 
me  ...  to  William,  my  earliest  and  my  dearest  male  friend." 

During  the  next  two  years  she  was  much  his  companion, 
often  in  long  walking-tours.  In  the  spring  of  1794 — some 
months  before  William  heard  of  Robespierre's  death  on  Ulver- 
ston  sands — they  made  a  great  tour  in  the  Lake-country,  taking 
walks  of  portentous  length  for  a  girl,  reviving  childish  impres- 
sions, and  adding  to  them.  They  paused  near  Keswick  to  pay 
a  visit  to  the  Calverts  at  Windybrow,  a  farmhouse  close  to  the 
town.  The  Calverts  were  cultivated,  simple  people,  fond  of 
reading,  and  loving  their  cottage  better  than  any  of  the  "  showy 
edifices  "  in  the  neighbourhood.  The  head  of  the  family  was 
land-agent  to  the  Duke  of  Norfolk.  The  Wordsworths  were 
"  paying  guests,"  and  had  their  own  sitting-room.  With  one  of 
the  brothers,  William  Calvert,  Wordsworth  had  been  in  the  Isle 
of  Wight  when  the  guns  boomed  hostility  to  France  across  Spit- 
head  ;  and  there  was  another,  Raisley,  who  seemed  to  be 
falling  into  consumption,  and  whose  condition  gave  Wordsworth 
great  anxiety  at  this  time.  Those  spring  days  were  very 
happy  ;  besides  the  Calverts  at  Windybrow,  there  were  the 
Speddings  at  Armathwaite,  who  were  to  give  an  eminent  son  to 
literature  in  the  coming  century.  There  were  wonderful  views 
from  the  windows  ;  and  the  Wordsworths  cultivated  happiness 
on  an  Irish  diet  of  milk  and  potatoes. 

Even  milk  and  potatoes  cost  something,  and  one  cannot 
live  upon  views.  Wordsworth  was  thinking  of  what  we  now 
call  journalism  as  a  possible  means  of  livelihood.  Twelve  years 
after  the  death  of  Samuel  Johnson,  journalism  was  very  far 
from  being  what  it  is  now  ;  but  the  great  man  had  fairly  launched 
it,  and  a  great  and  permanent  career  lay  before  it.  Journalism, 
the  art  of  the  periodical,  when  it  is  not  mere  gossip,  means  two 
things  in  chief,  literary  criticism  and  political  comment,  and,  in 
the  last  decade  of  the  eighteenth  century,  it  was  a  very  spring- 
tide for  both  in  Britain.  For  were  these  not  the  days  of  the 
Romantic  Revival,  the  Renascence  of  Wonder,  in  literature ; 
and  did  not  the  air,  from  end  to  end  of  the  island,  hum  and 


48  WORDSWORTH   AND    HIS   CIRCLE 

buzz  with  revolutionary  ideas,  social  theories,  and  the  noise  of 
Pitt-and-Fox-ite  controversy  ?  The  number  of  periodicals  was 
still  small,  and  none  was  perhaps  very  influential.  The  natural 
course  for  a  clever  and  energetic  young  man  still  was  to  do  what 
Steele  and  Johnson  had  done,  and  start  a  new  one  if  he  had 
enough  money  and  good  auspices ;  and,  with  or  without 
co-adjutors,  to  make  it  the  vehicle  of  his  thought.  Among 
Wordsworth's  Cambridge  friends  was  a  certain  James  Mathews 
who  was  pushing  his  fortune  in  literary  London  ;  and  the  two 
thought  that  they  might  together  start  a  monthly  "  miscellany." 
It  was  to  be  called  TJie  Philaiithropist,  and  to  be  "  republican  " 
without  being  "revolutionary."  Wordsworth,  in  the  true 
eighteenth- century  style,  was  to  "communicate  critical  remarks 
on  poetry,  the  arts  of  painting,  gardening,  etc.,  besides  essays  on 
morals  and  politics."  But  neither  Wordsworth  nor  Mathews 
was  a  Steele  or  an  Addison  ;  and  The  Philanthropist  never 
got  beyond  the  projectors'  brains.  Should  Wordsworth  go  up 
to  town  and  try  to  get  work  on  some  daily  newspaper  .<*  An 
Opposition  paper  it  must,  of  course  be ;  Wordsworth's  French 
sympathies  might  be  shaken,  but  he  was  as  averse  as  ever  from 
Pitt's  war  against  France.  He  consulted  Mathews  about  this  ; 
but  there  is  no  evidence  that  Mathews  encouraged.  Meanwhile 
something  happened. 

Through  the  winter  of  1 794-5  William  and  Dorothy  Words- 
worth were  mostly  in  the  Lake  country  and  much  at  Windybrow. 
In  those  months  Raisley  Calvert  was  dying,  and  Wordsworth 
spent  much  of  his  time  by  his  bedside.  Early  in  1795  he 
died  ;  and  it  was  found  that  he  had  left  ;^900  to  Wordsworth. 
It  was  not  much  ;  but  it  seemed  enough  to  be  a  poet  upon,  and 
it  was  enough  to  make  Wordsworth  give  up  thoughts  of  journal- 
ism for  ever.  Eleven  years  later  he  wrote  a  sonnet  about  | 
this  crisis  in  his  life,  which  reveals  to  us  the  very  essence  of 
the  man. 

"  Calvert !  it  must  not  be  unheard  by  them 
Who  may  respect  my  name,  that  I  to  thee 
Owed  many  years  of  early  liberty. 
This  care  was  thine  when  sickness  did  condemn 
Thy  youth  to  hopeless  wasting,  root  and  stem — 
That  I,  if  frugal  and  severe,  might  stray 
Where'er  I  liked";  and  finally  array 
My  temples  with  the  Muse's  diadem. 


THE   WEST   COUNTRY  49 

Hence,  if  in  freedom  I  have  loved  the  truth  ; 
If  there  be  aught  of  pure,  or  good,  or  great, 
In  my  past  verse  ;  or  shall  be,  in  the  lays 
Of  higher  mood,  which  now  I  meditate  ;— 
It  gladdens  me,  O  worthy,  short-lived  Youth  ! 
To  think  how  much  of  this  will  be  thy  praise." 

To  be  "frugal  and  severe,"  and  "finally"  to  win  "the 
Muse's  diadem " :  such  was  Wordsworth's  life,  and  such  its 
reward. 

Now  at  last,  then,  Dorothy's  dream  could  come  true,  and  she 
and  William  could  begin  their  joint-life  in  a  more  complete 
home  than  farmhouse  lodgings  could  supply.  But  where,  in 
the  length  and  breadth  of  England  ? 

Basil  Montagu,  who  was  to  become  eminent  at  the  Bar  and 
as  editor  of  Bacon,  was  just  Wordsworth's  age,  and  had  been  at 
Cambridge  with  him.  He  was  now  in  chambers  in  London,  a 
married  man,  though  not  yet  called  to  the  Bar.  Montagu  had 
a  friend  at  Bristol,  a  merchant  named  Pinney,  and  Pinney  had  a 
country-house  in  Dorset  called  Racedown  Lodge,  among  the 
big  hills  between  Crewkerne  and  Lyme  Regis.  In  the  summer 
of  1795  Wordsworth,  looking  out  for  something  to  help  the 
interest  of  Raisley  Calvert's  legacy,  consulted  Basil  Montagu, 
probably  face  to  face  in  London.  Pinney,  of  Bristol  and  Race- 
down,  had  a  boy  of  thirteen  ;  and,  on  Montagu's  advice  and 
with  his  introduction,  Wordsworth  went  to  Bristol  to  stay  with 
Pinney,  possibly  as  tutor  to  the  boy,  certainly  to  discuss  plans 
with  the  merchant.  The  result  was  the  construction  of  a 
delightful  scheme  for  the  Wordsworths.  Pinney  was  to  let 
them  have  Racedown  Lodge  rent-free,  on  condition  that  the 
eldest  son  of  the  family  should  have  right  of  entry  and  resi- 
dence for  a  few  weeks  each  year.  Basil  Montagu  had  a  son 
also  called  Basil,  whom  he  was  to  board  with  the  Wordsworths 
at  Racedown  ;  and  there  was  to  be  a  little  girl  besides,  of  three 
and  a  half  (a  relation  of  the  Wordsworths'),  whom  Dorothy  was 
to  look  after.  Such  was  the  projected  settlement  of  1795  which 
grew  out  of  Raisley  Calvert's  bequest  and  Basil  Montagu's 
friendship. 

Early  in  September  Dorothy  wrote  all  about  it  to  a  friend, 
and  told  gleefully  how  they  were  to  live  on  £^0  or  £Zo 
from  all  sources,  and  how  she  was  to  join  William  at  Bristol, 
i  E 


50  WORDSWORI^H   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

and  drive  with  him  fifty  miles  in  a  chaise  to  Racedovvn.  Tc 
Racedown,  accordingly,  the  brother  and  sister  went,  and  there 
they  remained  for  the  better  part  of  two  years,  till  July,  lygyj 
They  were  settling  in  there,  when  Coleridge — Pantisocrac)) 
having  come  to  grief — was  married  at  St.  Mary  Redcliffe's,  anc 
spending  his  honeymoon  in  a  tiny  cottage  at  Clevedon ;  anc 
they  had  been  settled  some  time  when  Southey,  also  newl} 
married,  set  out,  without  his  wife,  to  spend  the  winter  ii 
Portuguese  sunshine  and  among  the  lemon  groves  and  cork 
trees  of  Cintra. 

Two  wonderful  years  at  Racedown  ! — not  so  much  becausf 
of  the  poetry  Wordsworth  wrote  there,  though  that  was  no 
without  significance,  as  because  of  the  history  of  his  soul.  Fo 
we  cannot,  surely,  be  wrong  in  attributing  to  those  years  th( 
chief  part  of  that  process  of  recovery  of  which  Wordsworth  ha; 
told  us  so  much,  that  recovery  from  the  shocks  of  revolution 
that  restoration  of  admiration,  faith,  and  love,  chastened  by  th- 
knowledge  of  man  at  his  worst,  which  is  the  key  to  his  characte 
and  his  work.  And  we  certainly  need  be  in  no  doubt  as  to  th< 
chief  agency  by  which  the  recovery  was  brought  about. 

The  companionship  of  the  brother  and  sister,  enjoyed  inter 
mittently  during  long  walks  in  the  Lake  country  and  pleasan 
days  in  the  Calverts'  house  at  Windybrow,  was  now  continuous 
For  the  first  time  in  her  life  Dorothy  felt  at  home;  her  eagei 
passionate  love  of  Nature  was    fed  by   the   beautiful   uplan( 
scenery  of  Dorset  and  the  Devon  border,  the  bold  heights,  goldei 
with  broom  and  furze,  and  swept  by  sea-winds ;  and  she  ha- 
William  always  with  her.    They  lived  a  life  of  perfect  simplicit)  j 
reading  and  writing  indoors,  walking  and  gardening  withou  I 
Their  means  were  straiter  than  they  had  expected,  for,  some 
how,  little  BasU  Montagu  was  their  only  resident  charge.     Bu 
he  was  a   great  delight  to  them.     They  left  him  to  Nature 
leading,  with  a  little  gentle  human  discipline  superadded.     I 
the  first  winter,  a  certain  Mary  Hutchinson,  with  whom  Williar 
had  played  at  Penrith,  paid  them  a  visit.     Perhaps  this  was  th 
**  nearer  view  "  of  his  old  playmate,  of  which  he  was  to  sing — 

"  I  saw  her  upon  nearer  view, 
A  Spirit,  yet  a  Woman  too! 
Her  household  motions  light  and  free, 
And  steps  of  virgin-liberty  ; 


THE   WEST  COUNTRY  51 

A  countenance  in  which  did  meet 

Sweet  records,  promises  as  sweet ; 

A  Creature  not  too  bright  or  good 

For  human  nature's  daily  food  ; 

For  transient  sorrows,  simple  wiles, 

Praise,  blame,  love,  kisses,  tears,  and  smiles." 

Anyhow,  Dorothy  wrote  that  they  were  "  as  happy  as  human 
beings  can  be,  that  is,  when  William  is  at  home ;  for  you  cannot 
imagine  how  dull  we  feel  when  he  is  away.  .  .  .  He  is  the  life 
of  the  whole  house."  These  pleasant  things  make  the  outside 
picture.  But  it  is  the  inner  life  at  Racedown  of  which  they  are 
the  index,  which  chiefly  interests  us.  Wordsworth  himself  has 
admitted  us  into  the  inner  shrine  in  that  autobiography,  so 
veracious  and  yet  so  imaginative,  so  modest  and  yet  so  lofty  in 
its  modesty,  which  we  know  as  The  Prelude.  The  last  four 
books  of  The  Prehtde  tell  us  how  the  disillusioned  Revolutionist 
was  brought  to  that  culmination  of  his  genius — that  region  of 
central  calm  from  which  his  greatest  influence  came.  He  tells 
us  how,  when  he  could  bear  the  torment  of  moral  problems  no 
longer,  he  found  a  momentary  refuge  in  mathematics,  in  science 
so  abstract  as  to  appeal  to  the  reasoning  faculties  alone.  Then 
it  was  that  his  sister  saved  him  by  showing  him  his  true  self,  by 
assuring  him  that  his  true  self  was  clouded,  but  not  injured.  She 
reminded  him  of  the  high  prerogative  of  a  poet,  who  controls 
and  transfigures  circumstance,  and  is  not  mastered  by  it. 

"  She  whispered  still  that  brightness  would  return, 
She,  in  the  midst  of  all,  preserved  me  still 
A  Poet." 

Nor  did  Dorothy  help  her  brother  only  by  a  ministry  which 
might  harden  as  well  as  strengthen  his  self-reliance.  She 
softened  and  sweetened  him  as  only  a  woman's  influence  can 
soften  and  sweeten  a  man. 

[ij  "  But  for  thee,  dear  Friend  ! 

My  soul,  too  reckless  of  mild  grace,  had  stood 
In  her  original  self  too  confident. 
Retained  too  long  a  countenance  severe  ; 
A  rock  with  torrents  roaring,  with  the  clouds 
Familiar,  and  a  favourite  of  the  stars  : 
But  thou  didst  plant  its  crevices  with  flowers, 
Hang  it  with  shrubs  that  twinkle  in  the  breeze, 
And  teach  the  little  birds  to  build  their  nests 
And  warble  in  its  chambers." 


52  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS  CIRCLE 

Yet,  in  Wordsworth's  case,  no  human  affection,  no  humai 
being  could  be  more  than  an  "  under-agent "  in  such  grea 
operations.  Dorothy  could  take  her  brother  to  Nature,  coulc 
show  him  Nature ;  but  it  was  Nature  alone  who  could  do  thi 
whole  work.  Nature  was  only  "  assisted  "  by  "  all  varieties  c 
human  love."  It  was  Nature  only,  the  "Being  that  is  in  th 
clouds  and  air,"  the  Presence  that  disturbs  with  the  joy  q 
elevated  thotights,  that  could  heal,  in  a  nature  like  Wordsworth'.* 
the  wounds  that  Man  had  made.  And  it  was  only  after  he  hai 
been  healed  that  he  could  understand  or  love  Man  again. 

It  is  not  easy,  otherwise  than  by  quotation,  to  set  forth  th 
communion  which  Wordsworth  claimed  with  Nature.  Yet  i 
the  books  of  The  Prelude  referred  to  above  and  again  an 
again,  if  more  briefly,  elsewhere,  he  expresses  himself  on  th 
subject  with  great  fulness.  Perhaps  the  central  passage  of  a 
is  that  marvellous  conclusion  of  the  fourth  book  of  77 
Excursion — "  Despondency  Corrected,"  in  which  the  Wandere 
who  stands  for  Wordsworth  healed  and  restored,  exhorts  th 
Solitary,  who  may  be  taken  to  represent  Wordsworth  j^rrel 
and  wounded.  The  passage  is  the  more  relevant  that  part  (' 
it  was  written  in  the  west  country,  while  Wordsworth  Wc 
living  with  his  sister  there.  It  is  easy  to  quote  :  may  or 
venture  to  paraphrase  ? 

Men,  Wordsworth  seems  to  mean,  were  intended  to  possess 
peace  which  passes  all  understanding,  and  of  which  they  oug] 
not  to  be  deprived.    They  can  possess  it  by  virtue  of  a  faculty 
iviaginatio7i ;  which,  whatever  it  means  besides  and  elsewhere 
Wordsworth,  here  means  a  combination  of  the  reason  and  tl 
affections,  by  which  men  lay  hold  of  the  central  fact  of  tl; 
universe,  which   is  Love,  Truth,  and  Beauty.     In   doing  thl 
they  are  undaunted   by  the   evil  and   adversity  which  are  ;| 
prominent ;  or,  rather,  imagination  (which  may  also  be  calhl 
faith)  sees  these  hindrances  in  a  light  which  deprives  them  \ 
their  terrors.     This  use  of  the  imagination  is  more  than  he' 
moral  (Wordsworth  uses  the  striking  phrase  "  imaginative  Will  '^    , 
and  it  may  be  described  as  "Admiration,  Hope,  and   Lovej  | 
The  climax  of  its  achievement  is  to  find  Love  as  the  active  ai . 
dominant  principle  of  things;  and  to  recognize  through  Lo;    , 
the  kinship  of  man  with  man.  I    | 

And  now,  what  part  is  played  by  Nature,  in  the  sense  of  t!i   j 


THE  WEST   COUNTRY  53 

various  phenomena  of  the  open  air,  in  this  wholesome  exercise 
of  human  faculty  ?  How  are  men  helped  to  such  transcendent 
metaphysical  results  by'dayspring,  moonshine,  and  the  solemnities 
of  starlight ;  by  smiling  flower  and  waving  tree,  by  the  voices  of 
lambs  in  the  meadow,  or  the  wheel  of  the  eagle  about  some 
lonely  peak  ?  Wordsworth  answers  that  all  these  things  teach 
the  mind  through  the  affections  ;  that  they  touch  the  affections 
easily  and  naturally  because  they  exclude  the  jarring  human 
problems ;  and  that  the  gentler  and  quieter  they  are,  the  more 
likely  they  are  to  do  so.  When  the  charm  of  Nature  has  been 
shed  abroad  in  a  man,  then  he  is  prepared  to  face  even  the 
hardest  human  problems  with  the  serenity  of  love.  In  Words- 
worth's own  words,  written  probably  at  Racedown — 

"  For  the  Man  who  .  .  .  communes  with  the  Forms 
Of  nature,  who  with  understanding  heart 
Both  knows  and  loves  such  objects  as  excite 
No  morbid  passions,  no  disquietude, 
No  vengeance  and  no  hatred — needs  must  feel 
The  joy  of  that  pure  principle  of  love 
So  deeply,  that,  unsatisfied  with  aught 
Less  pure  and  exquisite,  he  cannot  choose 
But  seek  for  objects  of  a  kindred  love 
In  fellow-natures  and  a  kindred  joy. 
Accordingly  he' by  degrees  perceives 
His  feelings  of  aversion  softened  down  ; 
A  holy  tenderness  pervade  his  frame, 
His  sanity  of  reason  not  impaired. 
Say  rather,  all  his  thoughts  now  flowing  clear, 
From  a  clear  fountain  flowing,  he  looks  round 
And  seeks  for  good  ;  and  finds  the  good  he  seeks  ; 
Until  abhorrence  and  contempt  are  things 
He  only  knows  by  name  ;  and,  if  he  hear 
From  other  mouths,  the  language  which  they  speak. 
He  is  compassionate,  and  has  no  thought. 
No  feeling,  which  can  overcome  his  love." 

Nor  is  this  all :  Nature  is  not  only  a  refuge  and  a  teacher ; 
she  is  a  symbolic  system  ;  and  from  her  phenomena,  her  laws, 
we  may  and  ought  to  learn  the  laws  of  human  obligation.  "  So 
build  we  up,"  he  concludes — 

"  The  Being  that  we  are  ; 
Thus  deeply  drinking-in  the  soul  of  things, 
We  shall  be  wise  perforce.  .  .  .  Whate'er  we  see 


54  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

Or  feel,  shall  tend  to  quicken  and  refine  ; 
Shall  fix,  in  calmer  seats  of  moral  strength 
Earthly  desires  ;  and  raise,  to  loftier  heights 
Of  divine  love,  our  intellectual  soul." 

The  time  at  Racedown  was  not  very  productive.  Words- 
worth was  learning  rather  than  teaching ;  he  was  gaining  his 
life's  poise,  and  his  poetic  efforts  were  tentative.  He  tried  his 
hand  at  translating  Juvenal  ;  he  worked  hard  at  that  most 
undramatic  of  dramas,  The  Borderers,  which  hardly  the  most 
enthusiastic  Wordsworthian  now  reads,  but  which  the  greatest 
critic  of  his  age  spoke  of  as  '*  absolutely  wonderful,"  and  which, 
he  seemed  to  imply,  put  Wordsworth  above  Shakespeare  in 
knowledge  of  the  heart.  One  essay,  however,  he  made  of  lasting 
importance.  As  he  walked  about  Dorset  he  heard  the  story  of 
desertion,  the  story  of  the  ruined  cottage  and  Margaret,  which 
forms  the  second  half  of  the  first  book  of  The  Excursion  ;  and 
all  that  story  he  wrote  there,  with  one  or  two  other  passages 
afterwards  to  form  part  of  the  same  long  poem. 

In  1796  the  three  remarkable  inhabitants  of  the  west 
country,  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  and  Southey,  were  to  meet, 
with  consequences  momentous  to  English  literature.  Coleridge, 
in  the  first  year  of  his  married  life,  was  fussily  busy  and 
ambulatory,  but  essentially  unhappy  and  desultory.  His  head- 
quarters were  at  Redcliffe  Hill,  close  to  Bristol.  He  was 
writing  and  publishing  poetry  ;  but  his  chief  occupation  was 
trying  to  start  a  periodical  somewhat  on  the  lines  of  Words- 
worth's abortive  Philmtthropist.  It  was  to  be  called  The 
Watchman.  Coleridge  wandered  over  England  in  the  early 
months  of  1796  in  search  of  subscribers,  preaching  in  Unitarian 
chapels  on  the  Sundays.  Of  course  The  Watchman  soon  dropped 
into  limbo ;  and  so  did  scheme  after  scheme  of  this  unhappy 
young  man.  His  wife  kept  going  such  home  as  he  had  at 
Bristol ;  and  there,  this  same  year,  his  eldest  son,  David  Hartley, 
was  born. 

Southey  returned  from  Portugal  to  Bristol  and  his  wife  in 
May  of  this  year,  intending  to  leave  his  Edith  no  more,  and  to 
prepare  for  the  dogged  pursuit  of  law  in  the  winter.  His 
relations  with  Coleridge  were  still  rather  strained,  though  there 
was  no  open  quarrel  ;  and  they  were  often  together.  Somehow, 
Wordsworth  got  to  know  of  the  "  two  extraordinary  youths,"  as 


THE   WEST   COUNTRY  55 

he  called  them,  and  went  to  see  them  at  Bristol.  There  is  no 
evidence  that  the  acquaintance  with  Southey  went  much  further 
at  this  stage  ;  but  the  Wordsworths  took  greatly  to  Coleridge, 
and  there  were  several  interchanges  of  visits  between  Racedown 
and  Bristol.  The  Wordsworths  never  forgot  the  way  in  which 
Coleridge  at  Racedown  leapt  a  fence  and  came  across  a  field 
instead  of  walking  on  the  highroad.  Dorothy  was  immensely 
interested  in  the  new  friend,  in  his  talk,  and  his  good  temper. 
She  thought  him  plain  :  he  was  tall  and  thin,  and  it  was  hard 
to  get  over  the  wide  mouth  with  its  indifferent  teeth  ;  but  when 
the  gray  eyes  lighted  up  ! — it  was  indeed  a  "  fine  frenzy  "  that 
one  saw  in  them.  There  was  evidently  a  rushing  together 
of  spirits  here  from  which  great  things  might  come. 

In  1797  the  Wordsworths  left  breezy  Racedown,  and  came 
into  Somerset  to  be  near  the  Coleridges.  When  you  pass 
out  of  Bridgwater  to  continue  the  journey  westward,  you  are 
soon  among  pleasant  new  red  sandstone  uplands  well  supplied 
with  the  characteristic  features  of  English  scenery,  villages, 
country  seats,  comfortable  farmsteads.  In  front,  growing  into 
greater  clearness  as  your  wheels  or  horses'  feet  bear  you  onwards, 
is  the  long  line  of  hills  which  you  are  told  are  the  Quantocks, 
not  high,  except  here  and  there,  and  showing  much  woodland 
and  many  folds  and  creases  when  you  are  near  enough  to  make 
them  out.  Some  miles  from  Bridgwater  you  pause  on  a  summit, 
for  the  Quantocks  are  near  enough  to  be  scrutinized,  and 
between  you  and  them  there  is  a  breadth  of  low  country  with  a 
tall  church  tower,  and  near,  but  not  close  to  it,  a  village  of 
some  size.  It  is  Nether  Stowey ;  and  in  a  few  minutes  more 
you  are  in  the  gently  climbing  street  with  the  market-cross,  and 
the  runlet  of  water  by  the  side  of  the  roadway.  Making  still 
for  the  Quantocks,  you  pause  again  by  the  last  house  on  the 
left-hand  side  of  the  street.  For  there  is  a  tablet  let  into  the 
wall  which  tells  the  world  that  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge  lived 
here. 

Coleridge  drifted  to  Nether  Stowey  with  his  wife  and  baby 
Hartley  at  the  Christmastide  of  1796-7.  What  brought  him 
there  ? 

At  Nether  Stowey  lived  in  those  days  a  certain  Thomas 
Poole,  one  of  the  west-country  folk  on  whose  modest  shoulders 
Providence  laid  some  of  the  weight  of  the   literary   destinies 


56  WORDSWORTH   AND  HIS   CIRCLE 

of  England.  Poole  was  only  a  tanner  by  trade  ;  but  circum- 
stances and  kindness  of  heart  made  him  a  kind  of  Maecenas  or 
Monckton  Milnes  in  his  place  and  day.  His  people  were  of 
Somerset  for  generations  ;  and  Tom  Poole's  tanning-business 
was  hereditary.  He  took  to  it  with  much  intelligence  if  not 
with  very  hearty  liking,  and  settled  down  at  twenty-five  in  the 
substantial  house  at  Nether  Stowey  as  assistant  and  successor 
to  his  father.  He  was  a  man  of  quite  remarkable  impression- 
ableness  and  amiability ;  and,  though  he  had  no  educational 
advantages,  he  soon  showed  himself  an  essentially  well-educated 
man,  intellectual,  well  informed,  benevolent  and  just.  Un- 
happily for  his  social  peace,  if  fortunately  for  his  individual 
development,  his  sympathies  were  with  the  early  French 
Revolution  ;  and  this  liberalism  greatly  disturbed  his  excellent 
father,  other  relations  of  his,  and  the  conservative  notions  of 
Somerset  generally.  He  spent  many  hours  daily  in  reading ; 
and  among  his  favourite  books  there  were  (so  it  was  thought) 
the  works  of  too  many  French  philosophers.  But  the  French 
fever  passed  ;  and  it  was  not  as  a  revolutionary,  but  rather  as  a 
most  law-abiding  and  religious  citizen,'that  Tom  Poole  endeared 
himself  at  and  about  Nether  Stowey.  One  influence  that  may 
have  helped  to  keep  him  straight  was  that  of  his  cousin  John 
Poole,  an  Oxford  man,  a  Fellow  of  Oriel,  and  a  clergyman, 
whose  home  was  near.  The  two  men  had  much  to  do  with  the 
foundation  of  a  book  club  at  Nether  Stowey ;  and  J.  Poole 
of  Oriel  kept  a  sharp  eye  on  any  work  of  an  '*  infidel "  tendency 
which  his  "  democratic  "  cousin  might  introduce. 

In  1794,  when  Coleridge  was  twenty-two,  Tom  Poole  was 
twenty-nine,  and  still  absorbingly  interested  in  social  and  political 
questions  and  reforms.  It  was  the  year  of  Robespierre's  death ; 
of  Wordsworth's  wanderings  with  his  sister ;  of  Coleridge's 
introduction  to  Southey  at  Oxford,  and  their  subsequent 
negotiations  about  Pantisocracy  at  Bristol  and  in  its  neigh- 
bourhood. In  the  autumn  they,  with  Lovell  and  Burnett,  were, 
as  we  remember,  recruiting  in  the  highways  and  bye-ways 
of  Somerset  for  the  Pantisocratic  scheme :  what  more  inevitable 
than  that  they  should  go  to  Nether  Stowey,  and  what  more 
natural  than  that  they  should  call  on  Tom  Poole  ?  They  did 
call  on  him ;  he  was  immensely  interested  ;  and  took  them 
one  August  day,  to  see  Cousin  John,  who  was  much  shocked 


THE   WEST  COUNTRY  5T 

by  the  opinions  of  the  young  strangers.  "  Each  of  them,"  he 
records  in  his  Latin  diary,  "was  shamefully  hot  with  Democratic 
rage  as  regards  politics,  and  both  were  Infidel  as  to  religion  " 
(uterque  vero  rabie  Democratica,  quoad  Politiam  ;  et  Infidelis 
quoad  Religionem  spectat,  turpiter  fervet).  Tom's  point  of 
view  was  different ;  and  though  he  lamented  over  the  nature 
of  at  least  Southey's  religion,  he  described  the  scheme  with 
much  sympathetic  detail. 

The  acquaintance  thus  made  between  Coleridge  and  Poole 
ripened  with  time.  Poole's  intellectual  tastes  steadily  grew, 
and  were  fed  by  wise  reading  in  English,  French,  and  Latin, 
and  the  collection  of  a  good  library.  Poole  had  an  enthusiastic 
belief  in  Coleridge  and  his  probable  career ;  and  the  Poole 
house  at  Nether  Stowey,  with  the  tanyard  behind  and  the 
sloping  garden,  and  the  eagerly  sympathetic  Thomas  among 
his  books  within,  became  a  recognized  resort  of  the  wandering 
S.  T.  C.  On  one  occasion  he  took  his  young  wife,  and  stayed 
a  considerable  time.  The  substantial  Poole  gave  a  tangible 
proof  of  his  friendship  by  collecting  £41  towards  the  Watchman 
project ;  and  Coleridge  replied  in  words  of  impassioned  gratitude. 
He  himself  refused  to  regard  the  matter  as  mere  gratitude. 
"The  strong  and  timnixed  affection^'  he  wrote,  "which  I  bear 
to  you,  seems  to  exclude  all  emotions  of  gratittcde,  and  renders 
even  the  principle  of  esteem  latent  and  inert.  .  ,  .  God  bless  you, 
my  dear,  very  dear  friend." 

Towards  the  close  of  1796  Coleridge's  desultoriness  was  a 
source  of  real  misery  to  him,  and  he  turned  to  Nether  Stowey 
and  Poole  as  to  a  stronghold.  Could  he  but  get  a  house  near 
the  village,  where  he  might  settle  down,  write  poetry,  work  in 
the  garden,  and  perhaps  dabble  in  farming !  He  certainly 
needed  all  that  the  proximity  of  Poole's  strong  character  could 
do  for  him,  for  he  was  neuralgic  that  autumn  ;  and  alas  !  alas  ! 
he  tried  the  effect  of  drops  of  laudanum  on  the  pain.  He  was 
worried,  he  was  restless.  Was  there  no  simple  cottage  that 
Poole  could  recommend  ?  He  called  at  the  Bristol  post-office 
daily  in  search  of  an  encouraging  letter  from  Stowey.  At  last 
one  came ;  but  it  was  not  very  encouraging  after  all.  There 
was  a  cottage,  Poole  wrote,  but  surely  it  would  hardly  do !  It 
was  in  the  street ;  it  was  tiny  ;  it  was  ugly.  But  its  garden  was 
close  to  Poole's  garden  ;   the  Coleridges  admitted  it  was  not 


58  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

beautiful,  but  of  course  they  would  take  it  and  try  it  for  a  year  ; 
they  would  keep  one  servant,  and  Coleridge  himself  would 
teach  her  how  to  cook. 

Dearly  as  Poole  loved  Coleridge,  he  may  have,  must  have, 
had  his  doubts  about  the  amount  of  happiness  which  this  migra- 
tion of  the  impecunious  monsieiw,  madame,  et  bibe  to  within 
speaking  distance  would  bring  to  himself  and  his  relatives.  All 
that  was  unselfish  in  him  also — and  how  much  that  was  ! — rose 
up  to  warn  Coleridge  against  such  self-burial  in  a  remote  village 
of  a  young  writer  who  ought  to  be  nearer  the  centre  of  things,  i 
at  Bristol,  if  not  in  London.  This  prudence  kindled  Coleridge  | 
into  foolish  passion.  He  wrote  in  the  accents  of  a  thwarted 
lover,  and  as  if  he  thought  Poole  wished  him  evil.  In  decency, 
therefore,  the  amiable  Poole  could  protest  no  more ;  the  house 
was  taken,  and  Coleridge,  with  his  face  "  monstrously  swollen," 
a  sore  throat,  and  rheumatism  in  head  and  shoulders,  prepared  ' 
to  walk  to  Stowey,  and  apparently  carried  out  his  plan.  Shortly 
after  his  wife  followed,  with  a  new  friend,  Charles  Lloyd,  a 
young  Birmingham  banker  of  poetic  gifts  and  exceedingly 
shaky  nerves,  whose  acquaintance  Coleridge  had  made  on  one 
of  his  many  journeys.  On  one  of  the  last  days  of  the  "  depart- 
ing year,"  1796,  which  Coleridge  was  immortalizing  in  song, 
the  singular  household  entered  on  occupancy  of  the  cottage  by 
which  the  traveller  pauses  for  a  moment,  curiously  and  reverently. 
Coleridge  "  farmed  "  his  one-and-a-half-acre  garden,  read,  wrote, 
walked,  meditated,  and  associated  with  Charles  Lloyd  and  the 
Pooles.  Sometimes  he  did  bits  of  genuine  nursing.  "You 
would  smile,"  he  writes  to  a  friend,  "  to  see  my  eye  rolling  up  , 
to  the  ceiling  in  a  lyric  fury,  and  on  my  knee  baby  clothes  11 
pinned  to  warm  !  " 

It  was  between  Nether  Stowey  and  Racedown  that  the  most 
fateful  exchange  of  visits  between  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth 
took  place.  For  Coleridge,  possessing  something  which  might 
be  called  a  home,  felt  that  he  could  invite  people  ;  and  in  July, 
1797,  the  Wordsworths  came  to  see  him.  Having  once  come 
to  the  Quantocks,  they  had  a  mind  to  stay. 


CHAPTER  IV 
"THREE   PEOPLE:  ONE   SOUL" 

THE  Wordsworths'  visit  to  Nether  Stowey,  in  July,  1797, 
was  a  great  event.  In  June,  Coleridge  had  been  at 
Racedovvn,  reading  his  tragedy,  afterwards  published  as  Re- 
morse to  Wordsworth,  and  forming  his  very  high  opinion  of 
Wordsworth's  Borde^'ers.  So  the  intercourse  had  not  had 
time  to  cool  when  the  return  visit  was  paid.  Modest  as  were 
the  requirements  of  the  poet  and  his  sister,  it  must  have  been 
something  of  a  strain  on  the  Coleridges*  accommodation  and 
cookery  to  have  the  Wordsworths  for  a  fortnight.  True,  Charles 
Lloyd,  Coleridge's  now  constant  housemate,  was  away,  at  his 
native  Birmingham  ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  during  part  of  the 
visit,  there  was  another  guest  in  the  Nether  Stowey  cottage,  a 
very  important  guest  indeed. 

One  of  the  "  Blues  "  with  Coleridge  at  Christ's  Hospital  was 
a  boy  three  years  his  junior,  called  Char!es  Lamb,  the  son  of 
John  Lamb,  a  scrivener,  who  lived  in  the  Temple  and  acted  as 
a  kind  oi  factotum  to  a  Bencher  of  the  Inner  Temple,  named 
Samuel  Salt.  John  Lamb  had  married  the  daughter  of  a  Hert- 
fordshire yeoman,  whose  wife  was  housekeeper  at  the  Plumers* 
mansion  of  Blakesware,  near  Widford.  It  was  thus  from  humble 
surroundings  and  antecedents  that  Charles  Lamb  came  ;  and, 
when  he  went  to  Christ's  Hospital,  in  1782,  he  went  as  one  of  a 
family  of  three  children  (there  had  been  seven),  whom  his  father 
"found  it  difficult  to  maintain  and  educate  without  some  assist- 
ance." He  was  a  timid,  reserved  boy,  with  a  bad  stammer  ;  but 
full  of  sensibility  and  disposed  to  hero-worship.  He  has  told  us 
how  Coleridge  seemed  to  him  then,  "  Logician,  metaphysician, 
bard  "  in  embryo  ;  abnormal,  uncouth,  even  in  boyhood,  yet, 
even  in  boyhood,  so  fascinating,  so  wonderful.     "  How  have  I 

59 


60  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

seen  the  casual  passer  through  the  Cloisters  stand  still,  entranced 
with  admiration  (while  he  weighed  the  disproportion  between 
the  speech  and  \}lI'&  garb  of  the  young  Mirandula),  to  hear  thee 
unfold,  in  thy  deep  and  sweet  intonations,  the  mysteries  of 
Jamblichus,  or  Plotinus  (for  even  in  those  years  thou  waxedst 
not  pale  at  such  philosophic  draughts),  or  reciting  Homer  in 
his  Greek  or  Pindar — while  the  walls  of  the  old  Grey  Friars 
re-echoed  to  the  accents  of  the  inspired  charity-boy  !  " 

The  friendship  begun  at  Christ's  was  prolonged  into  man- 
hood. There  was  no  Cambridge  or  Oxford  for  Lamb ;  from 
Christ's  Hospital  he  passed,  after  a  short  interval,  to  the  brief 
tenure  of  a  clerkship  in  the  South  Sea  House,  to  be  followed  by 
that  clerkship  in  the  East  India  House,  which  he  held  for  most 
of  his  life.  Never  was  there  a  more  constant  or  contented 
Londoner  than  Lamb  ;  his  only  outlet  was  to  the  not-far-distant 
Herts,  where  lovers  of  Elia  know  what  he  found  at  "Blakes- 
moor  '*  (Blakesware),  and  "  Mackery  End."  But  the  peripatetic 
Coleridge,  as  confirmed  a  wanderer  as  Lamb  was  a  stay-at-home, 
used  to  turn  up  in  London  in  his  Cambridge  vacations,  and  later  ; 
and  the  two  old  school-fellows  met  at  the  "  Salutation  and  Cat," 
just  opposite  Christ's,  and  spent  long  evenings  together  in  an 
atmosphere  of  tobacco,  philosophy,  and  poetry.  The  principal 
colloquies  took  place  in  December,  1794,  in  the  winter  after 
Coleridge  had  first  met  Southey,  and  while  Southey,  at  Bristol, 
was  lamenting  over  Coleridge's  absence  and  indifference  both  to 
Pantisocracy  and  his  fiancee,  Sarah  Fricker.  Soon  after,  as  we 
know,  Southey  carried  Coleridge  off  to  the  west  country ;  and 
for  a  long  time  he  and  Lamb  never  met.  Lamb  had  a  love- 
story  to  occupy  him,  a  romance  which  left  nothing  but  a  pale 
sad  moonlight  on  his  life  and  writings.  He  lived  now  in  Little 
Queen  Street,  Holborn,  with  his  disabled  father,  his  mother,  , 
and  his  sister  Mary,  eleven  years  older  than  himself.  Would  t 
that  nothing  worse  than  disappointed  love  had  been  his  lot ! 

In  the  spring  of  1796  he  began  to  write  to  Coleridge  letters 
which  are  among  the  most  priceless  epistolary  treasures  in  the 
English  language,  and  which,  by  an  astonishing  and  happy 
Providence,  the  casual  S.T.C.  was  led  to  preserve.  Two  of 
those  letters  in  that  year  convey,  the  one  with  a  sweet  humour, 
the  other  with  tragic  self-restraint,  two  pieces  of  dark  news. 
In  May  Lamb  wrote : — "  Coleridge,  I  know  not  what  suffering 


"THREE   PEOPLE:    ONE   SOUL^'  61 

scenes  you  have  gone  through  at  Bristol.  My  life  has  been 
somewhat  diversified  of  late.  The  six  weeks  that  finished  last 
year  and  began  this,  your  very  humble  servant  spent  very 
agreeably  in  a  madhouse,  at  Hoxton.  I  am  got  somewhat 
rational  now,  and  don't  bite  any  one.  But  mad  I  was."  In 
September  there  was  worse  news.  Lamb  had  to  write  of  "  the 
terrible  calamities  that  have  fallen  on  our  family.  .  .  .  My  poor 
dear,  dearest  sister,  in  a  fit  of  insanity,  has  been  the  death  of 
her  own  mother.  I  was  at  hand  only  time  enough  to  snatch 
the  knife  out  of  her  grasp.  She  is  at  present  in  a  madhouse. 
.  .  .  God  has  preserved  to  me  my  senses ;  I  eat,  and  drink,  and 
sleep,  and  have  my  judgment,  I  believe,  very  sound."  Coleridge's 
reply  was  singularly  noble  :  let  us  hear  a  few  sentences  of  it, 
lest  we  should  fail  to  realize  the  clear  depths  of  a  nature  in 
which  there  was  so  much  foolish  admixture.  "  1  look  upon  you 
as  a  man  called  by  sorrow  and  anguish  and  a  strange  desolation 
of  hopes  into  quietness,  and  a  soul  set  apart  and  made  peculiar 
to  God  ;  we  cannot  arrive  at  any  portion  of  heavenly  bliss 
without  in  some  measure  imitating  Christ.  And  they  arrive  at 
the  largest  inheritance  who  imitate  the  most  difficult  parts  of 
His  character,  and,  bowed  down  and  crushed  underfoot,  cry 
in  fulness  of  faith,  *  Father,  Thy  will  be  done.'  I  wish  above 
measure  to  have  you  for  a  little  while  here — no  visitants  shall 
blow  on  the  nakedness  of  your  feelings — you  shall  be  quiet, 
and  your  spirit  may  be  healed.  ...  I  charge  you,  my  dearest 
friend,  not  to  dare  to  encourage  gloom  or  despair — you  are 
a  temporary  sharer  in  human  miseries  that  you  may  be  an 
eternal  partaker  of  the  Divine  nature.  I  charge  you,  if  by  any 
means  it  be  possible,  come  to  me." 

Lamb's  demeanour,  in  circumstances  so  awful,  was  as  nearly 
faultless  as  that  of  a  human  being  could  be.  He  rallied  and 
steadied  himself ;  he  did  not  falter  in  daily  duty ;  he  cultivated 
his  marvellous  literary  gift ;  he  kept  his  poor  alienated  sister 
close  to  his  heart.  He  wrote  very  often  to  Coleridge  :  they  had 
many  literary  matters  to  discuss,  for  Coleridge  had  published  his 
first  volume  of  miscellaneous  poems  in  the  spring ;  and  Lamb 
also  meant  to  be  a  poet.  He  criticized  Coleridge's  early  efforts 
with  that  combination  of  inwardness  and  minuteness  by  virtue 
of  which  he  stands  alone  among  English  literary  critics ;  and 
though  only  twenty-one,  and  so  appreciably  Coleridge's  junior, 


62  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS  CIRCLE 

he  showed,  without  a  trace  of  priggishness,  an  unmistakable 
moral  superiority  to  his  drifting  and  groping  friend.  What 
could  be  better  for  Coleridge,  in  the  days  when  he  v.  as  feverishly 
reaching  his  arms  towards  Nether  Stowey  and  Thomas  Poole, 
than  to  get  a  letter  beginning  thus :  "  My  dearest  Friend,— I 
grieve  from  my  very  soul  to  observe  you,  in  your  plans  of  life, 
veering  about  from  this  hope  to  the  other,  and  settling  nowhere. 
Is  it  an  untoward  fatality  (speaking  humanly)  that  does  this  for 
you — a  stubborn  irresistible  concurrence  of  events  ?  or  lies  the 
fault,  as  I  fear  it  does,  in  your  own  mind  ?  You  seem  to  be 
taking  up  splendid  schemes  of  fortune  only  to  lay  them  down 
again  ;  and  your  fortunes  are  an  ig7tis  faUius  that  has  been 
conducting  you,  in  thought,  from  Lancaster  Court,  Strand,  to 
somewhere  near  Matlock  ;  then  jumping  across  to  Dr.  Some- 
body's, whose  son's  tutor  you  were  likely  to  be  ;  and  would  to 
God  the  dancing  demon  may  conduct  you  at  last,  in  peace  and 
comfort,  to  the  *  life  and  labours  of  a  cottager.' " 

Well,  in  July,  1797,  the  "life  and  labours  of  a  cottager"  had 
been  six  months  in  progress,  and  Charles  Lamb  was  in  the 
Bridgwater  coach  on  his  way  to  Nether  Stowey  to  see  what 
they  were  like,  and  how  Coleridge  was  getting  on.  He  had  a 
week's  holiday  from  the  India  House  ;  we  can  fancy  how  sweet 
must  have  been  the  summer  air  and  how  soothing  the  fields  as 
he  sped  to  the  west  country.  And  Lamb  needed  stimulus  as 
well  as  soothing,  for  his  London  life  was  monotonous  and  lonely. 
On  June  24  he  had  written  :  "  I  see  nobody.  I  sit  and  read, 
or  walk  alone,  and  hear  nothing.  I  am  quite  lost  to  conversa- 
tion from  disuse  ;  and  out  of  the  sphere  of  my  little  family 
...  I  see  no  face  that  brightens  up  at  my  approach."  And  a 
little  later  :  "  I  long,  I  yearn,  with  all  the  longings  of  a  child  do 
I  desire  to  see  you — to  see  the  young  philosopher,  to  thank 
Sara  for  her  last  year's  invitation  in  person — to  read  your 
tragedy — to  read  over  together  our  little  book — to  breathe  fresh 
air — to  revive  in  me  vivid  images  of  *  SahUation  Scenery.'  " 

So  Lamb  and  the  Wordsworths  met  under  Coleridge's  roof, 
and  happy  hours  flowed  in  the  meadows  and  among  the  coombs 
of  Ouantock.  One  drawback  there  was.  Some  kind  of  slight 
accident  befel  Coleridge  at  the  beginning  of  the  visit,  and  dis- 
abled his  leg  so  that  he  could  not  form  one  of  the  walking- 
parties.     One  evening  while  the  rest  were  out,  he  sat  in  his  little 


"THREE   PEOPLE:   ONE   SOUL"  63 

garden  under  a  spreading  lime — heavy-sweet  with  blossom  it 
must  have  been — and  put  the  situation  into  blank  verse. 

"  Well,  they  are  gone,  and  here  must  I  remain, 
This  lime-tree  bower  my  prison !     I  have  lost 
Beauties  and  feelings,  such  as  would  have  been 
Most  sweet  to  my  remembrance  even  when  age 
Had  dimmed  mine  eyes  to  blindness!     They  meanwhile, 
Friends,  whom  I  nevermore  may  meet  again, 
On  springy  heath,  along  the  hill-top  edge, 
Wander  in  gladness,  and  wind  down,  perchance, 
To  that  still  roaring  dell,  of  which  I  told  ; 
The  roaring  dell,  o'erwooded,  narrow,  deep, 
And  only  speckled  by  the  mid-day  sun  ; 
Where  its  slim  trunk  the  ash  from  rock  to  rock 
Flings  arching  like  a  bridge  .  .  . 
.  .  .  Now,  my  friends  emerge 
Beneath  the  wide  wide  Heaven — and  view  again 
The  many-steepled  tract  magnificent 
Of  hilly  fields,  and  meadows  and  the  sea, 
With  some  fair  bark,  perhaps,  whose  sails  light  up 
The  slip  of  smooth  clear  blue  betwixt  two  isles 
Of  purple  shadow  !    Yes !  they  wander  on 
In  gladness  all ;  but  thou,  methinks,  most  glad, 
My  gentle-hearted  Charles  !  for  thou  hast  pined 
And  hungered  after  Nature,  many  a  year, 
In  the  great  City  pent,  winning  thy  way 
With  sad  yet  patient  soul,  through  evil  and  pain 
And  strange  calamity !     Ah  ! — slowly  sink 
Behind  the  western  ridge,  thou  glorious  Sun  ! 
Shine  in  the  slant  beams  of  the  sinking  orb. 
Ye  purple  heath-flowers  !  richlier  burn,  ye  clouds  ! 
Live  in  the  yellow  light,  ye  distant  groves ! 
And  kindle,  thou  blue  Ocean  !     So  my  friend, 
Struck  with  deep  joy,  may  stand,  as  I  have  stood.  .  .  . 

Nor  in  this  bower. 
This  little  lime-tree  bower,  have  I  not  marked 
Much  that  has  soothed  me.  .  .  .  Henceforth  I  shall  know 
That  Nature  ne'er  deserts  the  wise  and  pure  ; 
No  plot  so  narrow,  be  but  Nature  there, 
No  waste  so  vacant,  but  may  well  employ 
Each  faculty  of  sense,  and  keep  the  heart 
Awake  to  Love  and  Beauty !  .  .  . 
My  gentle-hearted  Charles  !  when  the  last  rook 
Beat  its  straight  path  along  the  dusky  air 
Homewards,  I  blest  it!  deeming,  its  black  wing 


64  WORDSWORTH   AND  HIS   CIRCLE 

Had  cross'd  the  mighty  orb's  dilated  glory, 
While  thou  stood'st  gazing  ;  or  when  all  was  still, 
Flew  creaking  o'er  thy  head,  and  had  a  charm 
For  thee,  my  gentle-hearted  Charles,  to  whom 
No  sound  is  dissonant  which  tells  of  Life." 

For  some  reason  Charles  Lamb,  when  he  read  the  poem  on 
its  publication  some  years  later,  quite  seriously  resented  the 
epithet  "  gentle-hearted."  "  Please  .  .  .  substitute,"  he  wrote, 
"drunken  dog,  ragged  head,  seld-shaven,  odd-eyed,  stuttering, 
or  any  other  epithet  which  truly  and  properly  belongs  to  the 
gentleman  in  question."  It  is  difficult  to  understand  why  Lamb 
should  have  felt  so  strongly  ;  perhaps  the  reiteration  was  annoy- 
ing ;  perhaps,  as  has  been  suggested,  the  words  seemed  to 
express  something  of  patronage  which  the  younger  man  may 
have  felt  in  his  friend's  attitude.  In  itself,  it  is  surely  an  epithet 
which  the  bravest  man  might  be  proud  to  deserve  ;  and,  as 
Wordsworth  knew,  it  was  one  which  surely  fitted  Charles  Lamb. 

"  Lamb,  the  frolic  and  the  gentle, 
Has  vanished  from  his  lonely  hearth," 

he  was  to  write  in  1835. 

Coleridge's  poem  renders  faithfully  the  Stowey  scenery. 
Dorothy  Wordsworth  was  charmed  with  the  country.  "  There 
is  everything  here,"  she  wrote,  "  sea,  woods  wild  as  fancy  ever 
painted,  brooks  clear  and  pebbly  as  in  Cumberland,  villages  so 
romantic.  The  woods  are  as  fine  as  those  at  Lowther,  and  the 
country  more  romantic  ;  it  has  the  character  of  the  less  grand 
parts  of  the  neighbourhood  of  the  lakes.'*  One  spot  in  particular 
struck  her  fancy.  "  William  and  I,  in  a  wander  by  ourselves, 
found  out  a  sequestered  waterfall  in  a  dell  formed  by  steep  hills 
covered  with  full-grown  timber  trees."  Was  it  the  place  of 
which  Coleridge  had  sung — 

"  That  still  roaring  dell,  of  which  I  told  "  ? 

Anyhow,  it  is  for  the  Wordsworthian  a  haunted  place,  and  "  a 
spirit  in  his  feet "  guides  him  thither  when  he  is  in  the  west 
country. 

Making  for  the  hills,  he  soon  leaves  Nether  Stowey  hidden 
by  a  turn  of  the  road,  and  mounts  gently,  and,  on  the  whole, 
continuously.  Soon  he  is  actually  among  the  Quantocks  ;  they 
fill  up  the  range  of  his  left-hand  vision  ;  on  the  right  he  has  the 


i 


•'THREE   PEOPLE:    ONE   SOUL"  65 

not  very  distant  Bristol  Channel.  At  last,  when  he  has  passed 
the  "  Castle  of  Comfort,"  once  an  inn,  now  a  lodging-house,  in 
its  leafy  recess  by  the  roadside,  the  hills  are  all  about  him,  and 
are  everything  in  the  landscape — ferny  knolls  ablaze  with  gorse  ; 
delicious  coombs  dark  with  dwarfish  oak  and  spreading  holly ; 
quarries  of  dark  red  Devonian  sandstone.  As  the  road  turns 
seaward  he  finds  himself  in  woods  of  the  kind  which  suggest 
the  proximity  of  a  country  house.  Yet  there  is  no  house,  no 
entrance-gate  to  be  seen.  There  is,  however,  a  little  woodland 
village  with  its  church  and  inn  and  a  stream  bickering  through 
it.  Its  name  is  Holford ;  and  here  the  Wordsworthian  leaves 
the  highroad,  crosses  the  stream,  and  follows  it  further  into  the 
recesses  of  the  wood.  After  some  windings  he  comes  to  the 
expected  gate,  and  enters  on  a  long  avenue,  with  woods  on 
either  side,  having  much  undergrowth  of  shaggy  holly,  and  the 
bickering  stream  always  on  his  right.  Before  he  scrambles 
down  to  pry  into  the  stream's  secrets,  he  must  go  on  to  see 
whither  the  avenue  is  leading  him.  It  is  leading  him,  he  finds, 
to  a  fine  many-windowed  old  mansion.  There  is  a  garden  in 
front  and  by  the  side,  but  the  entrance-door  is  on  the  other 
side  of  the  house,  looking  out  on  a  delightful  concave  of  the 
Quantocks,  ferny  and  shaggy,  where  deer  are  browsing.  It  is 
Alfoxden,  or,  more  strictly,  Alfoxton,  House,  owned,  in  1797, 
by  the  St.  Albyns. 

To  the  house  the  enthusiast  will  return  presently ;  but  the 
spirit  in  his  feet  will  not  rest  till  it  has  taken  him  down  to  the 
deep  bed  of  the  stream,  where  there  is  a  rude  bridge,  and 
the  water  whirls  and  eddies  round  an  islanded  rock,  making 
quite  a  little  cascade.  It  is — it  must  be — Dorothy's  place  of 
the  "  sequestered  waterfall  in  a  dell."  But  the  spot  has  more 
.definite  and  memorable  associations  than  these.  It  is  the  spot 
I  which  became  a  "chosen  resort"  of  Wordsworth;  the  spot 
I  which  was  the  birthplace  of  a  new  philosophy,  a  new  poetry,  of 
!  Nature  and  Man.     It  was  here  that  the  lines  came  into  being — 

"  I  heard  a  thousand  blended  notes,"  etc. 

The  domestic  arrangements  of  the  Coleridges  and  Words- 
worths  were,  in  those  days  at  least,  so  like  a  fairy-tale,  that 
we  are  not  much  surprised  by  anything  that  happened.  We 
know  that  they  had  Racedown  for  nothing  from  Mr.  Pinney 


66  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

of  Bristol.  To  such  casual  nomads  it  was  the  most  natural 
thing  in  the  world  to  leave  Racedown  for  a  fortnight's  visit  and 
never  return  to  it !  Dorothy  and  her  brother  wandered  along 
the  Holford  brook  until  they  saw  Alfoxden  House,  and  though 
they  never  thought  of  living  in  so  fine  a  mansion,  and  only 
longed  for  some  cottage  near  by,  the  fairies  presented  them  with 
the  mansion  itself.  It  was  to  be  let,  and  let  upon  terms 
preternatural  surely,  even  in  1797.  In  the  absence  of  the 
owners  the  tenant  of  the  house-farm,  John  Bartholomew,  made 
an  agreement  with  William  Wordsworth  to  let  to  him  Alfoxden 
House,  furniture,  gardens,  stables,  and  coach-house,  and  to  put 
him  in  immediate  possession  for  one  year  from  the  preceding 
midsummer  (the  date  of  the  agreement  being  July  14)  for 
£2^,  free  of  rates  and  taxes.  And  apparently  Wordsworth  was 
to  be  allowed  to  remain  on  indefinitely,  if  he  desired  to  do  so,  at 
the  same  rent ! 

And  so,  when  the  Stowey  fortnight  was  over,  when  the 
walks  and  the  readings  in  and  talks  about  poetry  in  Coleridge's 
cottage  had  come  to  an  end,  when  Charles  Lamb  had  gone 
back  to  London  "feeling  improvement  in  the  recollection  of 
many  a  casual  conversation,"  and  with  Wordsworth's  lines 
ringing  in  his  ears — 

"  Nay,  traveller,  rest !     This  lonely  yew-tree  stands,"  etc. 

Wordsworth    and    his    sister   went   on   to    take    up    house   at 
Alfoxden.     We  may  suppose  that  the  maid   was  sent  for,  orj 
even   possibly  fetched,  from   Racedown,    bringing   little    Basil 
Montagu  in  her  charge.     The  settling  into  the  furnished  house! 
was  an  easy  process  for  such  birds  of  the  air  as  William  andj 
Dorothy  ;   and   by  August   14    Dorothy   was  writing  :   *'  Here 
we    are    in    a   large    mansion,    in    a   large    park    with  seventjl 
head  of  deer  around  us.  .  .  .  It  was  a  month  yesterday  sinc<j 
we  came.     There  is  furniture  enough  for  a  dozen  families  lik<j 
ours.     There    is    a  very  excellent   garden,  well    stocked  witl 
vegetables  and  fruit.  ...  In  front  is  a  little  court,  with  gras 
plot,  gravel   walk,  and  shrubs  ;  the    moss    roses  were   in    ful 
beauty  a  month  ago.     The  front  of  the  house  is  to  the  south 
but  it  is  screened  from  the  sun  by  a  high  hill.  .  .  .  From  th' 
end  of  the  house  we  have  a  view  of  the  sea  .  .  .  and  exactl 
opposite  the   window  where  I  now  sit  is  an    immense  woo( 


"THREE   PEOPLE:    ONE   SOUL"  67 

whose  round  top  from  this  point  has  exactly  the  appearance  of 
a  mighty  dome.  .  .  .  Wherever  we  turn  we  have  woods,  smooth 
downs,  and  valleys  with  small  brooks  running  down  them.  .  .  . 
The  hills  that  cradle  these  valleys  are  either  covered  with  fern 
or  bilberries,  or  oak  woods.  .  .  .  The  Tor  of  Glastonbury  is 
before  our  eyes  during  more  than  half  of  our  walk  to  Stowey  ; 
and  in  the  park  wherever  we  go,  keeping  about  fifteen  yards 
above  the  house,  it  makes  a  part  of  our  prospect." 

All  those  things  the  visitor  can  see  to-day,  in  a  primitive 
solitude,  untouched  as  yet  by  modern  inventions  and  adapta- 
tions. 

**  Our  principal  inducement,"  Dorothy  wrote,  "  was  Cole- 
ridge's society."  The  inner  significance  of  the  Alfoxden  life  of 
the  Words  worths,  which  lasted  just  a  year,  is  the  association 
with  Coleridge.  It  was  so  close  and  constant,  and  the  genius  of 
the  three  was  so  glowing  with  early  fire,  that  it  was  a  real 
•  creative  fusion,  like  the  welding  of  metals.  "We  are  three 
:  people,"  said  Coleridge,  "but  only  one  soul."  And  the  first 
tangible  result  was  Lyrical  BalladSy  which  changed  the  face 
of  English  literature. 

The   comings   and   goings   between    Nether    Stowey    and 

Alfoxden    were    incessant.      Almost    immediately    after    the 

Wordsworths  entered  on  possession  Coleridge  went  to  stay  at 

Alfoxden,    and    he   was   followed   next   morning   in    time   for 

■  breakfast  by  Mrs.  Coleridge,  who  brought  with  her  an  interesting 

,ci. guest.     John  Thelwall,  born  in  1764,  and  therefore  a  good  deal 

lasii  older   than   Wordsworth   and    Coleridge,  the   son  of  a  Bristol 

)ust  I  tradesman,  was   one  of  the  recruits  whom   the  west   country 

and  supplied    to   the   revolutionary    liberalism    of    the   time.      He 

iersi became  an  attorney,  then  a  radical  journalist;  then  a  follower 

entjiof  Home  Tooke,  and  one  of  the  Society  of  the  Friends  of  the 

iiflCij  People  ;  with  Home  Tooke  he  went  to  prison  in  1794,  an  early 

lifc  victim  of  the  repressive  policy  in  England,  which  followed  the 

wit  [execution  of  King  Louis  XVI.  in  France.    He  was  now  sobering 

Tiasidown,  drifting  about  in  search  of  country  quarters,  and  soon 

fiiifto  settle  at  Llyswen  on  the  Upper  Wye.     He  had  come  to  see 

Coleridge  on  the  strength  of  supposed  political  sympathy ;  and 

Coleridge,  though  he  repudiated  most  of  Thelwall's  opinions, 

liked  the  man,  and  was  glad  to  introduce  him  to  Wordsworth. 

So  "  Citizen  John,"  as  he  was  called  in  the  cant  revolutionary 


ffOflC 


68  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

parlance,  was  one  of  the  little  house-party  at  Alfoxden  in  July, 
1797  ;  wandering  among  the  woods  and  hills  with  the  two  poets, 
making  acquaintance  with  the  dell  and  its  waterfall,  and  dis- 
cussing all  things  in  heaven  and  earth.  The  maid  from  Race- 
down,  if  she  ever  came,  had  not  yet  arrived  ;  an  old  woman 
from  an  adjoining  cottage  did  what  was  necessary  in  the  house. 
Thelwall  wrote  in  raptures  to  his  wife  about  the  place  and  the 
visit,  and  especially  about  the  dell  with  the  waterfall.  As  the 
party  were  sitting  there  one  day,  Coleridge  said  to  Thelwall  : 
"  Citizen  John,  this  is  a  fine  place  to  talk  treason  in  !  "  and  Thel- 
wall replied,  "  Nay !  Citizen  Samuel,  it  is  rather  a  place  to 
make  a  man  forget  that  there  is  any  necessity  for  treason."* 
Political  orthodoxy  in  the  neighbourhood,  as  represented  by 
the  Pooles,  was  much  scandalized  by  the  intimacy  with  the 
ex-prisoner ;  and,  as  we  shall  see,  the  Wordsworths  had  to 
rue  it. 

Five  important  sources  exist  as  to  the  Alfoxden  life.  The 
most  vivid  is  a  journal  kept  by  Dorothy  Wordsworth  in  1798,  in 
which  the  daily  life  of  the  "  three  persons  with  one  soul "  is 
faithfully  and  artlessly  mirrored.  Another  is  some  lines  of 
reminiscence  by  Wordsworth  himself  in  the  last  book  of  The 
Prelude.  Thirdly,  there  is  Coleridge's  poem,  TJie  Nightingale, 
written  in  April,  1798.  Fourthly,  there  are  Wordsworth's  and 
Coleridge's  prose  accounts  of  the  origin  of  the  Lyrical  Ballads. 
Lastly,  and  best  of  all,  there  is  the  totality  of  the  work  of  the 
two  poets  which  originated  at  Nether  Stowey  and  Alfoxden. 

Dorothy  Wordsworth's  Alfoxden  journal  gives  good  earnest 
of  her  wonderful  journal  of  the  Wordsworths'  tour  in  Scotland  in 
1803,  which,  when  first  published  in  its  fulness  more  than  thirty 
years  ago,  revealed  to  the  world  the  dimensions  of  her  genius 
There  is  not  a  sentence  of  the  Alfoxden  entries  which  does  nol 
testify  to  originality  and  individuality  ;  to  the  seeing  eye,  the 
understanding  heart,  and  the  power  of  choosing  in  expression  the 
smiting,  revealing,  unforgettable  word.  The  very  artlessness  o 
the  writing,  and  the  tameness  (as  the  majority  would  estimate 
it)  of  the  experiences,  make  the  fragment  the  more  precious 
Sentences,  phrases,  taken  at  random,  are  enough  to  show  what  i 
companion  for  poets  was  this  girl.     "  After  the  wet,  dark  days 

*  So,  substantially,  the  anecdote  appears  in  Coleridge's  *'  Table-Talk."      Words 
worth  tells  it  differently  in  his  notes  on  the  poem  Afi  Anecdote  for  Fathers, 


U 


"THREE   PEOPLE:    ONE   SOUL"  69 

the  country  seems  more  populous.  It  peoples  itself  in  the  sun- 
li,|j  beams."  "  Moss  cups  more  proper  than  acorns  for  fairy  goblets.'' 
"  The  sound  of  the  sea  distinctly  heard  on  the  tops  of  the  hills, 
which  we  could  never  hear  in  summer.  We  attribute  this  partly 
to  the  bareness  of  the  trees,  but  chiefly  to  the  absence  of 
the  singing  of  birds,  the  hum  of  insects,  that  noiseless  noise 
which  lives  in  the  summer  air."  "  The  half-dead  sound  of  the 
near  sheep-bell."  "  The  shapes  of  the  mist,  slowly  moving 
along,  exquisitely  beautiful ;  passing  over  the  sheep  they  almost 
ei-j  seemed  to  have  more  of  life  than  those  quiet  creatures."  One 
toi;  might  go  on  quoting  without  limit.  What  other  English  prose 
"*'  of  the  sort,  so  careful,  so  loving,  so  imaginative,  is  there  to  be 
by    found  at  that  epoch  > 

One  or  two  of  the  entries  point  curiously  beyond  themselves. 

Here,  for  example,  is  an  entry  for  March   7.     "William  and 

I  drank  tea  at  Coleridge's.  .  .  .  Observed  nothing  particularly 

•    interesting.  .  .  .  One  only  leaf  upon  the  top  of  a  tree — the  sole 

:    remaining  leaf — danced  round  and  round  like  a  rag  blown  by 

i:    the   wind."     Surely   they   must   have   talked    of  that   leaf  at 

Coleridge's  tea-table,   or   had   Coleridge  a  sight  of  the  entry 

afterwards  ?     For  who  does  not  know  the  stanza  of  Christahelf 

"  The  night  is  chill ;  the  forest  bare  ; 

iiiij ,  Is  it  the  wind  that  moaneth  bleak  ? 

fM  There  is  not  wind  enough  in  the  air 

.J  To  move  away  the  ringlet  curl 

From  the  lovely  lady's  cheek — 
There  is  not  wind  enough  to  twirl 
The  one  red  leaf,  the  last  of  its  clan, 
That  dances  as  often  as  dance  it  can, 
Hanging  so  light,  and  hanging  so  high 
On  the  topmost  twig  that  looks  up  at  the  sky." 

Again,  is  this  only  a  coincidence?  "January  31.  When 
we  left  home  the  moon  immensely  large,  the  sky  scattered  over 
with  clouds.  These  soon  closed  in,  contracting  the  dimensions 
of  the  moon  without  concealing  her."  So  far  Dorothy.  Now 
hear  Coleridge — 

'*  Is  the  night  chilly  and  dark  ? 
The  night  is  chilly,  but  not  dark, 
The  thin  gray  cloud  is  spread  on  high, 
It  covers  but  not  hides  the  sky. 
^••,[^  The  moon  is  behind,  and  at  the  full ; 

And  yet  she  looks  both  small  and  dull." 


70  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

Naturally,  there  are  several  links  between  the  Journal  and  ii  - 
Wordsworth's  poems  written  at  this  time.  E.g.^  hear  Dorothy  : —  "  - 
*'  Went  to  Poole's  after  tea.  The  sky  spread  over  with  one 
continuous  cloud,  whitened  by  the  light  of  the  moon,  which, 
though  her  dim  shape  was  seen,  did  not  throw  forth  so 
strong  a  light  as  to  chequer  the  earth  with  shadows.  At 
once  the  clouds  seemed  to  cleave  asunder,  and  left  her  in 
the  centre  of  a  black-blue  vault.  She  sailed  along,  followed 
by  multitudes  of  stars,  small  and  bright  and  sharp.  Their 
brightness  seemed  concentrated."  And  now  hear  William's 
blank  verse  : — 

"  The  sky  is  overcast 
With  a  continuous  cloud  of  texture  close, 
Heavy  and  wan,  all  whitened  by  the  Moon, 
Which  through  that  veil  is  indistinctly  seen, 
A  dull,  contracted  circle,  yielding  light 
So  feebly  spread,  that  not  a  shadow  falls. 
Chequering  the  ground — from  rock,  plant,  tree,  or  tower. 
At  length  a  pleasant  instantaneous  gleam 
Startles  the  pensive  traveller  while  he  treads 
His  lonesome  path  with  unobserving  eye 
Bent  earthwards  ;  he  looks  up — the  clouds  are  split 
Asunder, — and  above  his  head  he  sees 
The  clear  Moon,  and  the  glory  of  the  heavens. 
There,  in  a  black-blue  vault,  she  sails  along, 
Followed  by  multitudes  of  stars,  that,  small, 
And  sharp,  and  bright,  along  the  dark  abyss 
Drive  as  she  drives  !  how  fast  they  wheel  away. 
Yet  vanish  not  ! — the  wind  is  in  the  tree. 
But  they  are  silent ; — still  they  roll  along 
Immeasurably  distant ;  and  the  vault, 
Built  round  by  those  white  clouds,  enormous  clouds, 
Still  deepens  its  unfathomable  depth. 
At  length  the  Vision  closes  ;  and  the  mind  ; 
Not  undisturbed  by  the  delight  it  feels. 
Which  slowly  settles  into  peaceful  calm, 
Is  left  to  muse  upon  the  solemn  scene." 

Here,  it  is  evident,  there  is  more  than  resemblance  or  sug- 
gestion ;  there  is  joint  composition  of  a  very  interesting  kind. 
In   a   note   to  the    poem,   Wordsworth   tells   us    that   it    was'^ 
composed    extempore   on   the  road   as   he  walked  along,  and 
one  cannot  doubt   the   correctness   of  his  memory.     Between  J 
the   extemporaneous    versifier   and    the   artless    journal-writer 


"THREE   PEOPLE:    ONE   SOUL"  71 

there  could  be  no  question  of  plagiarism  or  ^?/^^?-plagiarism. 
How,  then,  are  we  to  explain  the  relations  between  Dorothy 
Wordsworth's  Journal  and  the  contemporaneous  poems  of  her 
brother  and  of  Coleridge  ? 

In  all  the  instances  which  have  been  here  brought  forward 
there  is  either  close  paraphrase  or  actual  identity  in  expression. 
Dorothy's  "  one  only  leaf  upon  the  top  of  a  tree — the  sole 
remaining  leaf — danced  round  and  round  like  a  rag  "  appears 
in  Coleridge's  version  as — 

"  The  one  red  leaf,  the  last  of  its  clan, 
That  dances  as  often  as  dance  it  can. 
Hanging  so  light,  and  hanging  so  high." 

Dorothy's  "  clouds  soon  closed  in,  contracting  the  dimensions 
of  the  moon  without  concealing  her,"  is  vititatis  mutandis, 
Coleridge's — 

"  The  thin  gray  cloud  is  spread  on  high. 
The  moon  is  behind  and  at  the  full, 
And  yet  she  looks  both  small  and  dull." 

In  the  third  instance,  that  of  Wordsworth's  Night  Piece^ 
there  is  actual  identity,  in  many  cases,  of  phrases  and  epithets. 
"  A  continuous  cloud,"  "  whitened  by  the  moon,"  **  chequering 
the  ground,"  "the  black-blue  vault,"  above  all  the  wonderful 
trinity  of  epithets  for  the  stars,  "small,  and  bright,  and  sharpy^ 
are  as  nearly  as  possible  identical.  How  are  we  to  suppose 
that  the  work  of  expression  was  divided  ? 

Wordsworth,  he  has  told  us,  composed  his  Night  Piece  as  he 
walked  ;  and,  therefore,  he  cannot  have  got  his  phrases  from 
his  sister's  journal.  On  the  other  hand,  Coleridge  does  not 
seem  to  have  been  with  Dorothy  when  she  saw  the  dancing 
red  leaf  and  the  moon  contracted  in  dimensions  "  by  the  gray 
cloud  '* ;  and,  therefore,  he  would  seem  to  have  learned  of  them 
from  her. 

I  think  there  is  a  strong  presumption  that,  in  all  those  cases, 
the  close  observer,  and  possibly  the  originator  of  the  distinctive 
phrases  and  epithets,  was  Dorothy.  We  know  of  similar 
instances  of  adoption  from  one  another  among  the  members 
of  the  Wordsworths'  circle.  The  lines  from  The  Ancient 
Mariner — 

"  And  thou  art  long  and  lank  and  brown 
As  is  the  ribb'd  sea-sand," 


72  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

were  presented  to  Coleridge  by  Wordsworth.  Wordsworth's 
phrase  in  his  Da;ffodiis, — "  That  inward  eye  which  is  the  bh'ss 
of  solitude"  was  given  him  by  his  wife.  Wordswvirth  said 
of  his  sister  in  well-known  lines  :  She  gave  me  eyes.  And 
Coleridge  wrote  of  her  in  her  goings  out  and  in  at  Alfoxden — 

".        .        .        A  most  gentle  Maid 

at  latest  eve 

(Even  like  a  lady  vowed  and  dedicate 

To  something  more  than  Nature  in  the  grove) 

Glides  through  the  pathways  ;  she  knows  all  their  notes, 

That  gentle  Maid  !  " 

Is  it  too  much  to  suppose  that  to  both  her  two  poet 
companions  Dorothy  may  have  supplied  much  of  the  minute 
observation,  which  Nature-poetry  requires,  and  that  imaginative 
insight  into  detail  which  is  expressed  by  perfect  epithet  and 
incisive  phrase  ?  May  we  not  feel  sure  that  Coleridge's  im- 
mortal pictures  of  dancing  leaf  and  clouded  moon  were  really 
hers,  and  that  they  got  only  their  final  touch  of  magic  from  him  ? 
Can  we  not  hear  the  Night  Piece  coming  into  being  between 
brother  and  sister  on  the  Stowey  road — his  the  rhythm,  hers 
the  wording  at  critical  and  cardinal  points ;  wholly  his  the 
characteristic  introspection  at  the  end — 

"  At  length  the  vision  closes  ;  and  the  mind, 
Not  undisturbed  by  the  delight  itfeels^ 
Which  slowly  settles  into  peaceful  calm, 
Is  left  to  muse  upon  the  solemn  scene  "? 

In  fact,  neither  the  poetry  of  Coleridge  nor  that  of  Words- 
worth is  characterized  by  the  careful — though  always  purely 
aesthetic — registration  of  natural  effects  which  we  find  in  the 
Alfoxden  Journal.  It  was  the  dower  of  the  gentle  maid  who 
glided  along  the  wild-wood  paths  and  knew  all  the  nightingale's 
notes. 

To  the  constant  and  complete  companionship  of  the  trio, 
Dorothy's  Journal  bears  ample  testimony.  "With  Coleridge" 
is  a  constant  entry ;  with  Coleridge  on  the  Stowey  road  in 
early  spring  days,  "the  midges  or  small  flies  spinning  in  the 
sunshine ; "  with  Coleridge  over  the  hills,  "  the  sea  at  first 
obscured  by  vapour.  ...  I  never  saw  such  a  union  of  earth, 
sky  and  sea  ; "  with  Coleridge  gathering  sticks  in  the  wood  ; 
with  Coleridge   listening   to  redbreasts    in   dripping  February 


ft::: 
ir. 


"THREE   PEOPLE:    ONE   SOUL"  73 

snow,  or  on  May  evenings  seeing  the  glow-worm  and  listening 
to  the  nightingale. 

In  the  last  book  of  TJie  Prelude,  Wordsworth  refers  to  this 
idyllic  time  in  lines  of  grave  and  affectionate  reminiscence.  It 
was^^still  the  time,  let  us  never  forget,  of  the  healing  of  his  soul 
which  he  attributed  in  so  large  measure  to  Dorothy.  He  has, 
therefore,  much  to  say  of  her,  of  her  planting  of  flowers  in  the 
crevices  of  his  nature  ;  of  her  breath  going  before  his  steps  like 
gentler  spring  in  spring.  But  much  of  his  recovery  and 
adornment  he  traces  to  Coleridge,  and  his  kindred  influence. 
The  result  must  have  been  marvellous,  for  it  finds  marvellous 
expression — 

"  Thus  fear  relaxed 
Her  overweening  grasp  ;  thus  thoughts  and  things 
In  the  self-haunting  spirit  learned  to  take 
More  rational  proportions  ;  mystery, 
The  incumbent  mystery  of  sense  and  soul. 
Of  life  and  death,  time  and  eternity, 
Admitted  more  habitually  a  mild 
Interposition — a  serene  delight 
In  closelier  gathering  cares,  such  as  become 
A  human  creature,  howsoe'er  endowed. 
Poet,  or  destined  for  a  humbler  name  ; 
And  so  the  deep  enthusiastic  joy, 
The  rapture  of  the  hallelujah  sent 
From  all  that  breathes  and  is,  was  chastened,  stemmed 
And  balanced  by  pathetic  truth,  by  trust 
In  hopeful  reason,  leaning  on  the  stay 
Of  Providence  ;  and  in  reverence  for  duty. 
Here,  if  need  be,  struggHng  with  storms,  and  there 
Strewing  in  peace  Hfe's  humblest  ground  with  herbs, 
iie|  At  every  season  green,  sweet  at  all  hours." 

ho 

yj      In  particular,  there  stood  out  in  Wordsworth's  memory  one 

"  Isummer.     Internal  evidence  shows  that  it  was  the  second  half- 

ummer  spent  at  Alfoxden,  that  of  1798,  the  year  of  Lyrical 

Ballads. 


"  That  summer,  under  whose  indulgent  skies. 
Upon  smooth  Quantock's  airy  ridge  we  roved, 
Unchecked,  or  loitered  'mid  her  sylvan  coombs, 
Thou,  in  bewitching  words,  with  happy  heart. 
Didst  chaunt  the  vision  of  that  Ancient  Man, 
The  bright-eyed  Mariner,  and  rueful  woes 
Didst  utter  of  the  Lady  Christabel  ; 


74  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

And  I,  associate  with  such  labour,  steeped 

In  soft  forgetfuhiess  the  livelong  hours, 

Murmuring  of  him  who,  joyous  hap,  was  foun'l, 

After  the  perils  of  his  moonlight  ride, 

Near  the  loud  waterfall  ;  or  her  who  sate 

In  misery  near  the  miserable  Thorn — 

When  thou  dost  to  that  summer  turn  thy  thoughts, 

And  hast  before  thee  all  which  then  we  were, 

To  thee,  in  memory  of  that  happiness, 

It  will  be  known,  by  thee  at  least,  my  Friend  ! 

Felt,  that  the  history  of  a  Poet's  mind 

Is  labour  not  unworthy  of  regard." 

Coleridge's  poem,  The  Nighthtgale,  is  in  a  lighter  vein,  bu 
equally  inspired  by  the  time,  the  place,  and  the  companionship 
The  poem  is  very  interesting,  and  full  of  beauty,  though  (a 
was  often  the  case  with  Coleridge),  unequal  in  style.  Its  mail 
interest  lies  in  its  treatment  of  Nature ;  in  the  revelation  i 
gives  of  Coleridge's  individual  attitude  towards  the  non-huma 
natural  world.  That  attitude  is  at  once  Wordsworthian  and  no 
The  trio  are  sitting,  in  a  moonless  night — every  trace  of  sunse 
faded,  and  dim  stars  overhead — on  a  bridge  over  a  soundles 
stream.  The  poet  blames  Milton's  phrase  about  the  nightingal 
most  viiisical,  most  melancJioly  !  which  he  holds  to  be  vitiated  b 
what  Ruskin  called  the  "  pathetic  fallacy,"  the  transference  < 
human  feeling — in  this  case  morbid — to  natural  objects.  In  a 
essentially  Wordsworthian  strain,  he  calls  on  the  poet  wt 
would  know  Nature  aright  to  forget  her  moods  and  yield  hin 
self  to  her.     Let  him  stretch  his  limbs — 

"  Beside  a  brook  in  mossy  forest-dell, 
By  sun  or  moonlight,  to  the  influxes 
Of  shapes  and  sounds  and  shifting  elements 
Surrendering  his  whole  spirit,  of  his  song 
And  of  his  fame  forgetful !  so  his  fame 
Should  share  in  Nature's  immortality, 
A  venerable  thing !     And  so  his  song 
Should  make  all  Nature  lovelier,  and  itself 
Be  loved  like  Nature !  " 

He  goes  on  to  translate  the  nightingale's  singing  into^i 
strain  too  romantic,  with  too  much  of  the  jewellery  of  magic,  :  r 
Wordsworth — 

•'  'Tis  the  merry  Nightingale 
That  crowds,  and  hurries,  and  precipitates 


"THREE  PEOPLE:    ONE   SOUL"  75 

With  fast  thick  warble  his  delicious  notes, 
As  he  were  fearful  that  an  April  night 
Would  be  too  short  for  him  to  utter  forth 
His  love-chant,  and  disburthen  his  full  soul 
Of  all  its  music ! " 

Alfoxden  and  Dorothy  follow,  both  lifted  into  the  world  of 
faery — 

"  And  I  know  a  grove 

Of  large  extent,  hard  by  a  castle  huge, 

Which  the  great  lord  inhabits  not ;  and  so 

This  grove  is  wild  with  tangling  underwood, 

And  the  trim  walks  are  broken  up,  and  grass, 
V  Thin  grass  and  king-cups  grow  within  the  paths. 

But  never  elsewhere  in  one  place  I  knew 

So  many  nightingales  ;  and  far  and  near, 
^^  In  wood  and  thicket,  over  the  wide  grove, 

They  answer  and  provoke  each  other's  songs. 

With  skirmish  and  capricious  passagings, 

And  murmurs  musical  and  swift  jug-jug. 

And  one  low  piping  sound  more  sweet  than  all — 

Stirring  the  air  with  such  an  harmony. 

That  should  you  close  your  eyes,  you  might  almost 

Forget  it  was  not  day  !     On  moonlight  bushes, 
dll  Whose  dewy  leaflets  are  but  half-disclosed, 

(.g  I  You  may  perchance  behold  them  on  the  twigs, 

Their  bright,  bright  eyes,  their  eyes  both  bright  and  full, 

Glistening,  while  many  a  glow-worm  in  the  shade 

Lights  up  her  love-torch." 


And  now  comes  Dorothy,  in  words  some  of  which  we  have 
heard  before  ;  with  a  tribute  to  her  insight  into  Nature. 

"A  most  gentle  Maid 
Who  dwelleth  in  her  hospitable  home 
Hard  by  the  castle,  and  at  latest  eve 
(Even  like  a  Lady  vowed  and  dedicate 
To  something  more  than  Nature  in  the  grove) 
Glides  through  the  pathways  ;  she  knows  all  their  notes. 
That  gentle  Maid !  and  oft,  a  moment's  space. 
What  time  the  moon  was  lost  behind  a  cloud, 
Hath  heard  a  pause  of  silence  ;  till  the  moon 
Emerging,  hath  awakened  earth  and  sky 
With  one  sensation,  and  those  wakeful  birds 
Have  all  burst  forth  in  choral  minstrelsy. 
As  if  some  sudden  gale  had  swept  at  once 
A  hundred  airy  harps !     And  she  hath  watched 


76  AVORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

Many  a  nightingale  perch  giddily 
On  blossomy  twig  still  swinging  from  the  breeze, 
And  to  that  motion  time  his  wanton  song 
Like  tipsy  joy  that  reels  with  tossing  head." 

Such  nights  were  these  at  Alfoxden  !     And  then  the  break 
up,  typical  of  almost  nightly  breaks-up —  L 

"  Farewell,  O  Warbler !  till  to-morrow  eve,  l!i^' 

And  you,  my  friends,  farewell,  a  short  farewell ! 
We  have  been  loitering  long,  and  pleasantly, 
And  now  for  our  dear  homes." 

And,  after  a  pretty  story  about  how  one  of  his  baby's 
"  night-fears  "  was  banished  by  his  father's  taking  him  out  and 
showing  him  the  moon  in  the  orchard — 

"  Once  more,  farewell, 
Sweet  Nightingale  !  once  more,  my  friends  !  farewell."  ^'^ 

Coleridge's  Nightmgale  was  one  of  the  Lyrical  Ballads  ;  and 
it  is  time  now  to  speak  of  them,  and  what  their  makers  meantlZ 
by  them  and  said  about  them.     For  it  was  to  them  that  all  this 
Quantock  life  led  up. 

Joint  ventures  in  poetry  were  common  in  those  days  :  Lovell 
and  Southey  co-operated  ;  so  did  Lamb  and  Charles  Lloyd 
Coleridge  and  Wordsworth  very  seriously  intended  to  be  poets 
and  as  they  walked  about  they  made  not  only  poetry,  but  plans 
One  hardly  serious  idea  was  a  prose-poem  called  the  Wander 
ings  of  CaiUy  to  consist  of  three  cantos,  of  which  Wordswortl 
was  to  write  the  first,  and  Coleridge  the  second.  Whichever  hac 
first  finished  his  task  was  to  do  the  third.  The  whole  worl 
was  to  be  completed  in  one  night !  Such  tours  de  force  wer 
not  in  Wordsworth's  line ;  and  when  Coleridge  brought  hi 
canto,  he  found  his  colleague  gazing  with  a  "  look  of  humorou, 
despondency"  at  an  almost  blank  sheet  of  paper.  Coleridge' 
canto  may  still  be  read,  with  a  characteristically  melodiou 
fragment  of  verse,  the  first  instalment  of  what  was  to  hav! 
been  a  poem  on  the  same  theme. 

"  Encinctured  with  a  twine  of  leaves. 
That  leafy  twine  his  only  dress !  fl;^ 

A  lovely  Boy  was  plucking  fruits,  ■. 

By  moonlight,  in  a  wilderness." 

Another  plan  was  ambitious  and  grandiose.     In  the  mincij 


t: :. 


"THREE   PEOPLE:    ONE   SOUL"  77 

Df  both  men  the  underlying  interest  was  the  interrelations  of 
Man,  Society",  and  Nature  ;  the  distant  roar  of  French  affairs 
A^as  still  in  their  ears,  and  mixed  itself  with  the  sounds  of 
)reeze  and  bird  and  stream  in  Somerset.  While  Wordsworth, 
It  ease  in  the  Alfoxden  dell,  looked  at  the  sweet  fellowship  of 
)rimrose  and  periwinkle  on  the  steep  banks,  he  thought  with 
)ain  of  the  "madding  passions,  mutually  inflamed,"  of 
lumanity — 

"  Much  it  grieved  my  heart  to  think 
What  man  has  made  of  man." 

\s  Coleridge  walked  on  the  high  table-lands  of  Quantock  and 
imong  its  sloping  coombs,  and  looked  at  streamlets  rising 
imong  "yellow-red  moss"  and  "conical  glass-shaped  tufts  of 
)ent,"  becoming  audible  in  little  water-breaks,  and  working 
heir  way  on  and  down,  by  lonely  barn  and  sheepfold,  to 
lamlet  and  village  and  then  to  sea-port  and  sea,  he  saw  in 
hem  types  of  human  society,  on  which  a  great  poem  might  be 
)uilt.  Wordsworth's  imagination,  as  we  shall  find,  was  to  work 
owards  the  same  end.  But  not  yet ;  and  meanwhile  a  simpler 
)lan  suggested  itself. 

In  November,  1797,  the  trio  set  out  on  a  longer  expedition 
han  usual.  They  were  to  round  Quantock  at  the  seaward  end 
)y  Watchet,  and  make  their  way  along  the  grand  coast  to 
-.ynmouth,  Lynton,  and  the  Valley  of  Rocks.  It  was  to  be  all 
one  on  foot ;  but  there  were  inevitable  expenses,  and  these 
ere  to  be  defrayed  by  a  joint-poem,  which  they  hoped  would 
ring  in  £s.  As  they  walked  along  under  November  skies, 
d  before  Watchet  was  reached,  Coleridge  told  of  a  dream 
hich  had  befallen  a  friend  of  his,  about  a  skeleton  ship  with 
igures  in  it.  Coleridge  made  a  story  out  of  the  dream  ;  and 
A^ordsworth  suggested  a  moral.  He  had  been  reading  in 
5helvocke's  Voj/ag-es  about  the  albatrosses  which  abound  near 
;^ape  Horn.  Let  us  make  the  navigators  wantonly  destroy  one 
)f  these  birds,  he  suggested,  and  be  punished  by  their  tutelary 
pirits.  So  the  plan  developed,  Wordsworth  contributing  the 
dea  of  the  ship's  being  navigated  by  dead  men,  but  nothing 
Ise  towards  its  structure.  The  same  evening  they  began  to 
/rite,  the  lead  being  taken  by  Coleridge,  but  Wordsworth 
ontributing  some  lines. 


t- 


78  WORDSWORTH   AND    HIS   CIRCLE 

It  was  the  Rime  of  the  Ancient  Mariner  which  had  its  origin 
that  day.  As  a  joint-composition  it  failed  as  completely  as  the 
Wanderings  of  Cain,  From  first  to  last,  in  conception  and 
execution,  in  general  scheme  and  in  details,  it  bore  Coleridge's 
unmistakable  and  inalienable  sign-manual.  Wordsworth  soon 
gave  up  the  completion  of  the  Old  Navigator's  story  into  his 
friend's  hands  ;  and  it  is  improbable  that  much  more  of  it  was 
written  during  the  November  walking-tour.  The  project  of  s 
poem  to  pay  expenses  was  given  up,  and  the  joint  plans  of  the 
popts  took  a  wider  shape. 

'^^sln  their  Stowey  and  Alfoxden  intercourse,  Wordsworth  anc 
Coleridge  had  many  discussions  about  the  theory  of  poetry 
and  the  functions  of  that  faculty  of  imagination  from  whicl* 
what  is  greatest  in  poetry  comes.  Each  was  occupied  in  th< 
making  of  poems  instinct  with  the  individuality  of  powerfu 
young  genius  ;  so  theory  and  practice  suggested  one  another  '\\ 
the  most  natural  manner,  and  poetry  and  the  criticism  of  poetn 
went  hand  in  hand.  Standing  on  the  edge  of  the  Romanti 
Revival,  both  poets  were  deeply  conscious  of  two  things 
namely,  that  poetry  ought  to  give  pleasure  by  the  surprise  c 
novelty ;  and  that,  since  Milton,  it  had  relied  too  much  on  arti 
ficial  magniloquence  and  violent  improbability  for  that  purpostjo.-: 
There  must,  they  agreed,  be  a  "  return  to  Nature,"  if  the  powe  ijfc 
and  charm  of  poetry  were  to  be  legitimate  ;  and  that  retur 
could  only  be  made  by  the  stern  avoidance  of  artificiality  anftr:: 
conventionality  in  expression,  and  the  production  of  novelty  b  tn 
the  spontaneous  exercise  of  imagination.  The  proper  subjec 
of  poetry  were  natural,  and  in  that  sense  ordinary  ;  but  the 
must  be  made  extraordinary,  surprising,  novel,  by  the  poet 
imaginative  treatment,  as  a  common  landscape  is  transfigure 
by  a  sudden  gush  of  sunset  or  moonlight.  And  now,  tw 
difi"erent  methods  of  treatment  suggested  themselves.  Poeti 
must  be  true  to  fact,  true  to  the  realities  of  human  nature  ;  bi 
it  need  not  reject  the  preternatural.  Introduce  a  preternatur 
machinery  if  you  will  ;  but  only  on  condition  that  it  someho 
helps  the  presentment  of  the  natural.  Present  the  illusory, 
you  will ;  but  only  if  thereby  you  may  the  better  stimula 
emotion  which  captures  and  holds,  not  by  its  unreality  but  tB^: 
its  intense  reality.  But  then,  on  the  other  hand,  the  poet  migl 
dispense   with   the   preternatural    or   even    with  the    explicit 


■5: 

t 


joi 


"THREE   PEOPLE:    ONE   SOUL"  79 

omantic,  and,  without  suffering  imagination  to  abdicate  any  of 
ts  functions,  might  find,  in  the  persons,  scenes,  and  incidents 
f  ordinary  experience,  the  novelty  and  surprise  which  poetry 
equires,  until  the  natural  should  seem  preternatural/V 

A  series  of  poems  was  to  be  written  illustrating^ these  two 

lethods.     Coleridge,  who  affected  the  preternatural  more  than 

vajVords worth,  Coleridge  who  had  taken  the  lead  in  the  Ancient 

/[ariner,  was  to  choose  preternatural  and  "  romantic  "  themes  ; 

th  Vordsworth   was   to   exhibit  the   romance    of  every-day  ex- 

erience. 

an      Accordingly,  through  the  second  Alfoxden  half  year,  in  the 

pring  and  summer  of  1798,  the  double  task  proceeded,  but  in  a 

lid  lost  unequal  manner.      Coleridge  had  appropriated  the  com- 

tlii  letion  of  the  A  ncient  Mariner ;  but  Wordsworth  outran   his 

rfii  esultory   colleague   in   the    preparation   of    Lyrical    Ballads. 

Coleridge  finished  the   Mariner,  and  wrote  also  the  first  part  of 

ett]  ^hristabely  and  a  fragment  called  the  Dark  Ladie  ;  but  neither 

iDti  '\hristabel,  nor  the  Dark  Ladie  appeared   in  the  joint-volume. 

'he  Mariner  was  the  sole  representative  of  the  preternatural 

foetry  ;  and  Coleridge  added  to  it  only  the  Nightingale  poem, 

i  rhich  we  know  already,  and  one  or  two  dramatic  fragments. 

303  Vordsworth  on  the  other   hand,  worked  industriously  at  his 

o\v(  bject,  viz.  "  to  give  the  charm  of  novelty  to  things  of  every 

;tui  ay " ;  and  produced,  as  he  tells  us.  The  Idiot  Boy ;  the  lines 

-an  eginning,  Her  Eyes  are  Wild ;  We  are  Seven  ;  The  Thorn  ;  and 

yl  thers. 

)p  The  friendly  Joseph  Cottle  was  of  course  to  be  the  publisher. 
thde  went  to  see  the  poets  in  May,  staying  for  a  week  at 
)oe(  Llfoxden  with  Wordsworth.  The  authors  and  the  publisher 
7Ut(  pnferred  about  the  volume  ;  they  made  another  expedition  to 
trl-ynton  and  the  Valley  of  Rocks.  The  volume  was  to  be  called 
oet:  lyrical  Ballads  ;  it  was  to  be  published  forthwith  ;  and  Cottle 
bvas  to  give  thirty  guineas  for  the  copyright.  The  proofs 
,..jf,|^ere  corrected  in  the  course  of  the  summer,  and  the  book 
\b^  ppeared  in  September.  It  was  a  small  volume,  of  two  hundred 
,^-  .ipjd  ten  pages. 

,ylji  Such  is  the  external  history  of  a  book  which  initiated  the 
y^tigher  Romanticism  in  England  and  brought  Wordsworth  into 
^jjijlie  front  rank  of  English  poetry.  So  slight  was  Coleridge's 
[jjjji  hare  in  it  that  the  work  was  essentially  Wordsworth's ;  and  by 


80  WORDSWORTH  AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

it  alone  we  may  almost  say  that  Wordsworth  stands  or  falls. 
Here  is  his  characteristic  strength,  here  his  characteristic  weak- 
ness ;  here,  born  among  the  Alfoxden  hollies  and  the  ferny 
coombs  of  Quantock,  is  that  poetry  of  Nature,  that  philosophy 
of  common  life,  which  has  been  a  religion  or  a  mockery  to 
succeeding  generations. 

It  is,  first  of  all,  as  the  outcome  of  a  gentle  open-air  life, 
the  life  reflected  in  Dorothy  Wordsworth's  Journal,  that  these 
poems  interest  us.      The  Wordsworthian  visitor  to   the  west 
country,  as  he  journeys  piously  between  Alfoxden  and  Nether 
Stowey,  sees  the  Lyrical  Ballads  written  large  everywhere.     In 
the  green  meadow  outside  the  Alfoxden  gate,  is  the  place  which 
held  the  cottage  of  "Simon   Lee"  the  old  huntsman,  whom 
Wordsworth  places  in  "  the  sweet  shire  of  Cardigan,"  but  whc 
was   really  huntsman   to   the   Alfoxden  squires,  the  old  mar 
whom  the  poet,  with  his  strong  sinews,  once  helped  to  uneartl 
the  stump  of  a  tree,  and  who  poured  forth  thanks  and  praise.' 
in   such   abundance   that  Wordsworth  thought,    "  They  neve  , 
would  have  done."     At  the  door  of  Alfoxden  House  stood  the 
tall  larch  on  which  the  redbreast  sang  that  ''  first  mild  day  o 
March  "  which  will  live,  we  may  predict,  till  time  shall  be  n' 
longer.     At   the  same  spot,  and  at  the  same  jocund  seasor 
Wordsworth  put  little  Basil  Montagu  into  the  ethical  difficult; 
from  which   only  the   Alfoxden   weathercock    could    extricat 
him.     Once  more,  it  was  in  front  of  Alfoxden  House  (with  th 
usual  mystification  as  to  persons  and  places)  that  the  brace  c 
dialogues  known  as  Expostulation  and  Reply  and    The  Tabk 
Tnrjied  was   made,  in    which  the    simplest  verse   is  made  t 
express  the  deepest  Wordsworthian  thought.     In  the  Alfoxde 
groves  walking  up  and  down,  the  poet  bethought  him  of  th 
little  girl  he  had  talked  to  at  Goodrich  five  years  before,  th 
girl   who   would    not    admit    that    death   had   really  remove 
any  of  her  dear  ones.     Beginning  his  verses  with  the  child 
impregnable    phrase,    "  Nay,    we    are    Seven ! "      Wordsworl 
made   the    poem   we    know,    and    took    it    in    to    read    it    ' 
Dorothy    and   Coleridge.      As    it    stood    it    began   with    tl 
second  stanza — 

"  I  met  a  little  cottage  girl ; " 
and  Wordsworth  felt  that  it  needed  an  introductory  verse.     ' 


"THREE   PEOPLE:    ONE   SOUL^'  81 

want  to  make  one  before  tea,"  he  said ;  whereupon  Coleridge 
suggested  the  line — 

"  A  simple  child,  dear  brother  Jem,"  etc. 

("  Dear  brother  Jem  "  was  a  common  friend,  and  the  allusion  was 
a  freak).  Wordsworth  adopted  the  line  promptly  ;  and,  though 
dear  brother  Jem  himself  objected,  the  line  remained  the  first 
of  We  are  Seven  in  the  first  edition  of  Lyrical  Ballads,  The 
\Thorn  grew  on  the  Ouantocks,  and  Wordsworth  fitted  a  legend 
to  it.  The  Last  of  the  Flock  was  a  Holford  story.  The  Idiot 
'■  Boy,  the  mark  of  so  many  satiric  shafts,  was  made  on  foot 
among  the  Alfoxden  hollies,  on  a  theme  supplied  by  Thomas 
Poole,  viz.  the  idiot's  phrase  in  the  last  stanza — 

"  The  cocks  did  crow  to-whoo,  to-whoo, 
And  the  sun  did  shine  so  cold  !  " 

The  Alfoxden  poetry  of  Wordsworth  is  not  all  to  be  found 
between  the  boards  of  the  first  edition  of  Lyrical  Ballads. 
Peter  Bell  also  was  written  within  those  groves,  though  not 
published  until  1819 ;  and  the  greater  part  of  The  Old  Cumber- 
lajtd  Beggar. 

What  is  the   inner   significance  of  it  all }    The   criticism, 

favourable   and   unfavourable,  passed   on   Wordsworth's   early 

poetry  by  his  contemporaries  is  full  of  interest  and  importance  ; 

but  the  interest  and  importance  belong  to  the  history  of  criticism 

rather  than  to  the  history  of  poetry.     As  readers  of  poetry,  what 

jitwe  now  ask  is  not  what  Southey  or  Jeffrey  or  Charles  Lamb 

{(thought  of  the  Lyrical  Ballads,  but  what  we  ourselves  think  and 

if  [feel  about  them,  we  ourselves,  remembering  what  went  before 

tit  them,  and  what  has  come  after,  and  dowered  at  least  with  the 

tit  sure  intuition  of  posterity,  that  intuition   which  nothing  short 

of  genius  can  confer  on  the  contemporary  reviewer.     What  is  it, 

then,  that  we  think  and  feel  ? 

With  regard  to  the  West-country  poetry  of  both  Coleridge 
and  Wordsworth,  we  realize,  to  begin  with,  that  it  stretches  far 
beyond  the  bounds  of  the  plan  on  which  much  of  it  was  under- 
taken. We  ought  to  judge  it  relatively  to  that  plan  ;  but  we 
ought  also  to  judge  it  absolutely.  In  so  far  as  the  plan  was  a 
I  joint  one,  we  have  already  seen  that  it  at  once  broke  down. 
Wordsworth  not  only  avoided  the  preternatural ;  he  theoretically 


82  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS  CIRCLE 

despised  it.     This  is  clearly  set  forth  in  the  prologue  to  Peter 
Bell. 

Again,  as  regards  his  own  particular  object,  the  operation  of 
imagination  on  lowly  themes,  expressed  in  ordinary  language, 
Wordsworth,  even  thus  early,  attained  a  far  more  than  merely 
controversial  success.  He  really  contributed  richly  to  the 
poetry  of  common  life,  and  did  not  merely  illustrate  argumenta- 
tive assertions  about  it.  He  really  understood  and  interpreted 
Nature,  and  did  not  merely  show  how  it  ought  to  be  interpreted 
and  understood.  He  took  his  place  in  a  trinity,  of  which  the 
other  two  members  were  Blake  and  Burns,  a  trinity  of  reformers 
indeed,  but  also  of  absolutely  great  poets.  Burns  met  his 
unhappy  fate  two  years  and  a  half  before  Lyrical  Ballads,  In 
July,  1796,  when  poetic  life  was  opening  for  Wordsworth  at 
Racedown,  Burns,  on  the  Solway  flats,  was  pleading,  like  the 
dying  Goethe,  for  "  more  light."  *'  Let  him  shine,"  he  said  to 
the  friend  whose  kind  hand  would  have  warded  off  from  his  eyes 
the  level  rays  of  the  low  sun  sinking  to  the  Galloway  hills  ;  "  Let 
him  shine ;  he'll  not  shine  long  for  me."  Wordsworth  knew 
one  of  the  great  things  that  Burns  had  done  for  British  poetry, 
and  felt  the  blow  of  his  death.  "  I  mourned,"  he  was  to  write 
afterwards — 

"  I  mourned  with  thousands,  but  as  one 
More  deeply  grieved,  for  He  was  gone 
Whose  light  I  hailed  when  first  it  shone. 

And  showed  my  youth 
How  verse  may  build  a  princely  throne 
On  humble  truth." 

And  the  force  of  the  Lyrical  Ballads  is  less  fully  conveyed  by 
any  of  Wordsworth's  or  Coleridge's  apologiae,  than,  by  anticipa 
tion,  in  the  stanzas  in  which  Burns  commemorates  his  own  call 
and  consecration  to  the  poet's  mission,  when  Coila,  the  Muse 
told  him  how  she  had  watched  his  early  development. 

It  is  interesting  to  notice  that  so  far  was  Burns  from  looking 
on  himself  as  a  great  reformer,  that  he  felt  hopeless  of  rivalling 
the  excellence  of  those  eighteenth-century  poets,  Thomson 
Shenstone,  Gray,  whom  we  hardly  read,  and  whom  Wordsworth 
would  hardly  deign  to  commend. 

In  Blake  there  are  many  tones  not  to  be  heard  in  Words- 
worth ;  but  the  Songs  of  Innocence  had  been  ten  years  befon 


"i 


r 


■^. 


:r 


i: 


of 


"THREE   PEOPLE:    ONE   SOUL"        '  83 

the  world  when  the  Lyrical  Ballads  appeared  ;  and  they  came 
from  the  self-same  fount — 

"  And  I  plucked  a  hollow  reed, 
And  I  made  a  rural  pen, 
And  I  stained  the  water  clear, 
And  I  wrote  my  happy  songs 
Every  child  may  joy  to  hear." 


To  htild  a  princely  thro7ie  on  hitmble  truth.  That,  as  Words- 
ivorth  truly  divined,  was  Burns'  ideal,  and  it  was,  even  in  the 
Lyrical  Ballads,  his  own  striking  achievement.  The  humility 
Df  the  truth  all  readers  will  be  ready  to  admit ;  but  there  will  be 
ijuestion  as  to  the  princeliness  of  the  throne.  In  spite  of  the  poet's 
omprehensive  and  repeated  repudiations  of  preternaturalism, 
The  Thorn  is  as  instinct  with  the  preternatural  as  any  old-world 
Dallad  or  as  Christabel  itself.  The  power  of  uncanny  suggestion 
s  freely  used  in  it.  Wordsworth's  object  was  to  invent  a  story 
A  ivhich  should  express  the  genius  of  a  stunted  thorn  as  he  saw  it 
ei  :ormented  by  storm  on  the  Quantocks.  By  the  thorn  there  was 
muddy  pond,  and  not  far  off  a  mossy  mound,  enchanting  in 
•een  and  vermilion.  From  the  beginning  these  three  objects 
re  treated  with  an  intensity  which  requires  suggestion  for  its 
ealization.  The  lichens  and  mosses  on  the  thorn  are  malign 
:hings  :  they  are  bent — 

"  With  plain  and  manifest  intent 
To  drag  it  to  the  ground  ; 
And  all  have  joined  in  one  endeavour 
To  bury  this  poor  thorn  for  ever." 

The  muddy  pond  calls  out  for  a  dead  body.  "  The  heap  of 
J  iarth  o'ergrown  with  moss,"  "  so  fresh  in  all  its  beauteous  dyes," 
s  so  like  an  infant's  grave  that  an  infant  must  somehow  be 
juried  there.  And  so  we  are  brought  to  a  woman  in  a  scarlet 
^^[:loak  crying  mysteriously  by  day  and  by  night, 

\\[  "  Oh  misery  !  oh  miser}^ ! 

Oh  woe  is  me  !  oh  misery  !  " 


,113^: 


iOO, 

orti 


[The  cause  of  her  misery  no  man  may  know  for  certain.     "  They 
i5ay "  this  and  "  They  say  "  that  about  it.     There  was  a  seduc- 
:ion,  of  course ;  a  desertion,  and  a  child.     Yet  stay ;  was  there 
^x  child  ? 


84  WORDSWORTH    AND   HIS  CIRCLE 

"  No  earthly  tongue  could  ever  tell."  But  some  there  are 
who  maintain  that  cries  come  on  winter  nights  from  the  place 
where  the  thorn  grows  ;  and  some  will  "  swear  "  that  among  the 
cries  are  voices  of  the  dead.  Did  the  mother  hang  her  baby  on 
the  tree  or  drown  it  in  the  pond  ?  Anyhow  one  thing  is 
certain  ;  if  there  was  a  baby  it  is  buried  under  the  lovely  mound. 
Some  say  the  vermilion  cups  are  drops  of  infant's  blood  ;  others 
that  a  baby's  face  looks  up  at  you  from  the  face  of  the  pond. 
Others  relate  that  when  justice,  suspecting  murder,  was  about 
to  dig  for  infant's  bones,  the  hill  of  moss  plainly  moved,  and  the 
grass  all  round  was  alive  with  shudderings  !  As  to  all  this  the 
poet  knows  nothing.  Only  the  tree  remains,  the  tree  he  saw, 
with  the  figure  he  imagined  : — 

"  I  cannot  tell  how  this  may  be, 
But  plain  it  is  the  Thorn  is  bound 
With  heavy  tufts  of  moss  that  strive 
To  drag  it  to  the  ground  ; 
And  this  I  know,  full  many  a  time, 
When  she  was  on  the  mountain  high, 
By  day,  and  in  the  silent  night. 
When  all  the  stars  shone  clear  and  bright. 
That  I  have  heard  her  cry, 
Oh  misery  !  oh  misery  ! 
Oh  woe  is  me  !  oh  misery  !  " 

Preternaturalism,  however,  plays  a  small  part  in  this  earl} 
poetry  of  Wordsworth.  The  deepest  burden  of  the  Lyrica 
Ballads  is  the  characteristic  Wordsworthian  philosophy  o 
Nature  and  Man  which  appears  in  them.  In  its  most  profoundly 
suggestive  form,  that  philosophy  is  expressed  in  some  of  th 
slightest  of  the  poems.  In  the  Lines  written  in  Early  Spring, 
for  example,  the  primroses  and  periwinkles  of  the  Alfoxde 
dell,  the  budding  twigs  and  "  twinkling "  birds,  suggest  wha 
seems  a  mere  play  of  fancy,  but  is,  in  Wordsworth,  an  interpre 
tation  of  the  Universe.  To  the  poet,  as  he  lay  in  that  swee 
place,  there  came  the  conviction,  not  only  of  life,  all  round  hin 
not  only  of  beauty,  but  of  sentient  pleasure. 

"  Through  primrose  tufts,  in  that  sweet  bower 

The  periwinkle  trailed  its  wreaths,  j 

And  'tis  my  faith  that  every  flower 
Enjoys  the  air  it  breathes. 


"THREE   PEOPLE.    ONE   SOUL"  85 

The  budding  twigs  spread  forth  their  fan 

To  catch  the  breezy  air. 
And  I  must  think,  do  all  I  can, 

That  there  was  pleasure  there." 


And  the  belief  in  Nature  as  happily,  beautifully,  and  even  self- 
consciously, alive,  immediately  suggests  the  contrasted  picture 
of  humanity. 

"If  this  belief  from  Heaven  be  sent, 
If  such  be  Nature's  holy  plan. 
Have  I  not  reason  to  lament 
What  man  has  made  of  man  ?  " 


Again  in  the  poems  called  Expostulation  and  Reply^  and   The 
Tables  Ttirned^  as  well  as  in  the  lines  beginning — 

"  It  is  the  first  mild  day  of  March," 

the  spiritual  activities  of  Nature  are  indicated  with  startling 
freshness. 

"  Love,  now  a  universal  birth 

From  heart  to  heart  is  stealing. 
From  earth  to  man,  from  man  to  earth  : 
It  is  the  hour  of  feeling. 

"And  from  the  blessed  power  that  rolls 
About,  below,  above, 
We'll  frame  the  measure  of  our  souls. 
They  shall  be  tuned  to  love." 

"  Nor  less  I  deem  that  there  are  Powers 
Which  of  themselves  our  minds  impress  ; 
That  we  can  feed  this  mind  of  ours 
In  a  wise  passiveness." 


1% 


"  Let  Nature  be  your  teacher. 
She  has  a  world  of  ready  wealth, 
jjfj*  Our  minds  and  hearts  to  bless, 

u  I  Spontaneous  wisdom  breathed  by  health. 

Truth  breathed  by  cheerfulness. 

;rplt! 

^ye^  I  "  One  impulse  from  a  vernal  wood 

May  teach  you  more  of  man. 
Of  moral  evil  and  of  good, 
Than  all  the  sages  can." 

The  Alfoxden  poetry  of  Wordsworth  stands  out  as  a  poetry 
of  humble  life.     In  reading  it  we  may  forget  the  poet's  theoretic 


86  VVUHUbWUltin    AINU    Jtllb    LlUUJLHi 

claim  for  peasants  and  their  language,  and  enjoy  (or  otherwise) 
the  poetry  as  poetry.  Does  it  justify  itself?  Such  a  poetry 
has  three  incontestable  claims.  It  may  plead  the  oneness  of 
the  human  nature  common  to  all  men,  with  its  potentialities  of 
grandeur  and  tragedy  ;  it  lends  itself  to  pathos ;  and  it  lends 
itself  to  humour.  Which  of  these  claims  is  satisfied  by  the  first 
edition  of  Lyrical  Ballads^  or  by  any  of  the  west  country  poetry 
outside  the  limits  of  that  edition  t 

In  this  early  work  Wordsworth  as  yet  hardly  touches  the 
tragic  or  sublime  in  human  life.  Her  Eyes  are  Wild  is  tragedy 
passionate  tragedy.  The  tragedy  in  The  Thorn  and  TJie  Forsaken 
Indian  Woman  is  purely  artificial.  Perhaps  the  dignity  of  the 
peasant  is  most  worthily  shown  in  TJie  Old  Cumberland  Beggar 
with  its  beautiful  pendant, -^^/w^?:/  Tranquillity  and  Decay.  The 
political  economy  indeed  of  the  former  is  dubious :  on  that  side 
the  poem  is  a  plea  for  mendicancy  as  against  the  workhouse 
But  it   is   also   a   plea   for   something  very  different,    for   th( 

greatness  of  man  as  man.  \ 

I 

''  'Tis  Nature's  law  j 

That  none,  the  meanest  of  created  things,  j 

Or  forms  created  the  most  vile  and  brute,  j 

The  dullest  or  most  noxious,  should  exist 
Divorced  from  good — a  spirit  and  pulse  of  good, 
A  life  and  soul,  to  every  mode  of  being  j 

Inseparably  linked.     Then  be  assured  j 

That  least  of  all  can  aught  that  ever  owned  • 

The  heaven-regarding  eye  and  front  sublime 
Which  man  is  born  to — sink,  howe'er  depressed. 
So  low  as  to  be  scorned  without  a  sin."  '■ 

And  the  sunset  of  humble  life  shines  grandly  in  the  pendar 
lines — 

*'  The  little  hedgerow  birds 
That  peck  along  the  roads,  regard  him  not. 
He  travels  on,  and  in  his  face,  his  step, 
His  gait,  is  one  expression  ;  every  limb, 
His  look  and  bending  figure,  all  bespeak 
A  man  who  does  not  move  with  pain,  but  moves 
With  thought.     He  is  insensibly  subdued 
To  settled  quiet ;  he  is  one  by  whom  ' 

All  effort  seems  forgotten  ;  one  to  whom  I 

Long  patience  hath  such  mild  composure  given  | 


Ddi 


"THREE   PEOPLE:    ONE   SOUL''  87 

That  patience  now  doth  seem  a  thing  of  which 
He  hath  no  need.     He  is  by  nature  led 
To  peace  so  perfect  that  the  young  behold 
With  envy,  what  the  old  man  hardly  feels." 


m 


In  one  or  two  of  the  poems,  Wordsworth  shows  that  incon- 
stant sense  of  dignity  which  has  been  one  of  the  chief  stumbling- 
blocks  to  his  admirers.  The  humble,  as  he  recognized  to  the 
blessing  of  the  world,  is  a  fit  theme  of  poetry  ;  the  trivial,  he  was 
apt  to  forget,  is  not.  Simon  Lee,  in  spite  of  beautiful  phrases, 
beautiful  lines,  in  spite  of  its  delicate  poetic  appreciativeness,  is 
trivial  in  many  places,  and  is  dangerously  near  triviality  through- 
Dut.  But  perhaps  The  Last  of  the  Flock  sins  most  seriously 
r  against  the  great  law  of  dignity.  The  poet  meets  a  man  on  the 
,.,  public  road  near  Holford,  a  man  in  tears,  carrying  a  lamb  in  his 
larms. 

"  He  saw  me,  and  he  turned  aside, 
As  if  he  wished  himself  to  hide  ; 
And  with  his  coat  did  then  essay 
To  wipe  those  briny  tears  away. 
I  followed  him,  and  said,  '  My  friend, 
What  ails  you  ?    Wherefore  weep  you  so  ? ' 
*  Shame  on  me,  sir  !  this  lusty  lamb. 
He  makes  my  tears  to  flow. 
To-day  I  fetched  him  from  the  rock  ; 
He  is  the  last  of  all  my  flock.' " 

This  lachrymose  person  is  another  victim  of  the  dismal 
science.  He  started  life  with  a  capital  of  one  ewe,  from  which 
Ihe  raised  fifty  sheep.  We  are  given  a  most  incomplete  account 
lof  the  flockmaster's  circumstances  ;  but,  apparently,  he  could  not 
iafjsupport  his  six  children  on  his  income.  He  therefore  applied 
for  parish  relief,  and  was  told  that  he  must  use  up  his  capital 
jbefore  he  could  be  entitled  to  receive  it.  This,  with  much 
•natural  agitation,  he  proceeded  to  do.     Quite  naturally  also — 

"  Every  week  and  every  day, 
My  flock  it  seemed  [why  seemed  ?]  to  melt  away. 
They  dwindled,  Sir,  sad  sight  to  see  ! 
From  ten  to  five,  from  five  to  three, 
A  lamb,  a  wether,  and  a  ewe  ; — 
And  then  at  last  from  three  to  two  ; 
And  of  my  fifty,  yesterday 
I  had  but  only  one  : 


88  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

And  here  it  lies  upon  my  arm, 
Alas  !  and  I  have  none  ; — 
To-day  I  fetched  it  from  the  rock  ; 
It  is  the  last  of  all  my  flock." 

In   this   poem   the   pathos   is   nullified   by  the  obscurity   and 
doubtful  ethics  of  the  situation,  and  the  unmanly  nervelessness 
of  the  hero.     From  such  art,  we  feel,  the  dignity  of  the  humble  ^ 
can  gain  nothing. 

It  may  seem  paradoxical  to  say  so,  but  it  is  surely  true,  that 
a  large  part  of  the  significance,  and  the  significance  for  good,  of 
the  Alfoxden  poetry  depends  upon  that  quality  with  which 
Wordsworth  was  so  slenderly  endowed,  viz.  humour.  Words 
worth's  humour  was  a  relatively  small  element  in  his  constitu 
tion  ;  but  it  was  there,  and  it  was  genuine,  and  of  the  first 
Lyrical  Ballads  and  of  Peter  Bell  it  is  a  main  inspiration.  The 
failure  to  recognize  it  explains  and  condemns  much  of  the 
ridicule  with  which  Wordsworth's  early  poetry  was  greeted. 
Goody  Blake,  The  Idiot  Boy,  and  Peter  Bell  are  essentially 
humorous  poems,  and,  realized  as  such,  there  seems  no  reason 
why  they  should  seem  ridiculous  or  other  than  successful  and 
delightful.  Goody  Blake  is  a  ballad-idyll  of  peasant  life,  in 
which  a  delicate  sprinkling  of  preternatural  suggestion  is  laid 
on  a  basis  of  verisimilitude  in  incident,  the  excellence  of  the 
lyrical  style  being  secured  by  the  humour  of  the  treatment 
Contrast  it  in  this  respect  with  The  Last  of  the  Flock,  where 
there  is  no  humour. 

The  flockmaster  is  poor — 

**  Six  Children,  Sir  !  had  I  to  feed  ; 
Hard  labour  in  a  time  of  need  ! 
My  pride  was  tamed,  and  in  our  grief 
I  of  the  Parish  asked  relief. 
They  said,  I  was  a  wealthy  man  ; 
My  sheep  upon  the  uplands  fed, 
And  it  was  fit  that  thence  I  took 
Whereof  to  buy  us  bread. 
Do  this  ;  how  can  we  give  to  you. 
They  cried,  what  to  the  poor  is  due  ? " 

There  is  no  charm  of  lyrical  style  there. 
Goody  Blake  is  poor — 


r: 


~. 


"  O  joy  for  her  !  whene'er  in  winter 
The  winds  at  night  had  made  a  rout ; 


; 


''THREE   PEOPLE:    ONE   SOUL"  89 

And  scattered  many  a  lusty  splinter 
And  many  a  rotten  bough  about, 
Yet  never  had  she,  well  or  sick, 
As  every  man  who  knew  her  says, 
A  pile  beforehand,  turf  or  stick, 
Enough  to  warm  her  for  three  days. 

u  Now,  when  the  frost  was  past  enduring, 

And  made  her  poor  old  bones  to  ache, 
Could  anything  be  more  alluring 
Than  an  old  hedge  to  Goody  Blake  ? 
And,  now  and  then,  it  must  be  said. 
When  her  old  bones  were  cold  and  chill, 
She  left  her  fire,  or  left  her  bed. 
To  seek  the  hedge  of  Harry  Gill." 


Here  there  is  unmistakable  and  undeniable  charm,  and  it  is 
the  charm  of  humour. 

As  for  Tke  Idiot  Boy,  about  which  a  great  many  foolish  things 
have  been  said,  it  is  really  as  humorous  as  John  Gilpin,  and 
seems  to  stand  as  little  in  need  of  apology.  The  intrinsic 
dignity  of  the  two  situations  seems  about  equal ;  and  if  the 
fun  of  The  Idiot  Boy  is  less  apparent  and  less  rollicking  than 
that  of  John  Gilpin,  its  atmosphere  and  local  colouring  are 
more  poetic,  and  it  counts  for  much  as  a  rendering  of  life  and 
TJj  landscape.  It  is  one  of  Wordsworth's  most  inspired  and  inevi- 
table poems  ;  it  is  built  on  a  hearsay  phrase,  and  it  was  poured 
forth  extemporaneously  as  the  poet  walked  in  the  Alfoxden 
groves.  There  may  be  too  much  of  it ;  but  if  it  is  not  true  and 
delightful  poetry,  one  knows  not  where  true  and  delightful 
poetry  is  to  be  found. 

It  is  the  same  with  Peter  Bell,  only  the  charm  is  deeper.  It 
is  the  charm  (the  paradox  must  be  repeated)  of  humour ;  it  is 
the  charm  (another  paradox)  of  style.  Style,  like  humour,  is 
one  of  the  qualities  the  possession  of  which  is  most  often  denied 
to  Wordsworth.  It  is  indeed  true  that  his  style  was  uncertain 
and  variable,  as  his  sense  of  humour  was  inconstant.  But  the 
Alfoxden  poetry  as  a  whole  is  no  exception  to  the  law  that 
good  verse  is  never  written  in  a  bad  style — in  other  words,  that 
one  can  hardly  in  the  criticism  of  poetry  separate  the  thought 
from  the  expression.  Wordsworth's  power  at  its  strongest  is 
demonstrably  a  power  of  verbal  distinction,  a  power  of  phrase, 
a  power  of  noble  rhythm.  This  is  made  abundantly  clear  in 
Lyrical  Ballads  and  in  Peter  Bell. 


90  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

The  connection  of  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth  with  the 
Quantock  country  carried  within  it  the  cause  of  its  own  disso- 
lution. The  poets  had  been  drawn  thither  largely  by  revolu- 
tionary sympathies,  and  for  revolutionary  sympathies  they  were 
to  be  driven  from  it.  By  1798  both  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth 
had  moved  far  from  the  ideals  of  any  section  of  revolutionists  in 
England  or  France.  But  the  orthodox  conservatism  of  Somerset 
took  no  heed  of  fine  distinctions  ;  even  Thomas  Poole  had  been 
suspect  ;  and  the  queer  Wordsworth  in  particular,  living,  with 
his  wild-eyed  sister,  in  a  place  so  much  too  big  for  them  and 
their  means,  wandering  and  muttering,  and  not  afraid  of  con- 
sorting with  John  Thelwall  himself,  was  it  desirable  that  he 
should  continue  to  have  Alfoxden  on  such  easy  terms  ;  nay, 
was  it  altogether  safe  to  let  him  go  about  unwatched  ?  The 
St.  Albyn  family  began  to  have  qualms.  There  seems  in- 
contestable authority  for  stating  that  a  spy  was  sent  down  by 
government  to  look  after  the  poets ;  and  Southey  told  his 
brother,  seven  years  later,  that  "The  fellow,  after  trying  to 
tempt  the  country  people  to  tell  lies,  could  collect  nothing  more 
than  that  the  gentlemen  used  to  walk  a  good  deal  upon  the 
coast,  and  that  they  were  what  they  called  poets.  He  got 
drunk  at  the  inn,  and  told  his  whole  errand  and  history." 

Wordsworth  was  blissfully  unconscious  of  the  espionage,  and 
stoutly  maintained  that  nobody  annoyed  him  or  made  difficul- 
ties about  his  staying  on  at  Alfoxden.  But  his  memory  must 
have  played  him  false,  or  he  must  have  been  "  blissfully  havened  " 
from  the  facts.  As  early  as  September,  1797,  Tom  Poole, 
taking  full  responsibility  for  introducing  Wordsworth  as  a  tenant, 
wrote  to  Mrs.  St.  Albyn  with  the  view  of  reassuring  her  as  to 
his  respectability.  He  believed  him  "  to  be  in  every  respect  a 
gentleman."  He  referred  to  his  uncle.  Canon  Cookson  of 
Windsor,  as  in  himself  a  sufficient  warranty.  "But  I  am 
informed,"  Poole  proceeded,  "  you  have  heard  that  Mr.  W.  does 
keep  company,  and  on  this  head  I  fear  the  most  infamous  false- 
hoods have  reached  your  ears.  Mr.  W.  is  a  man  fond  of  retire- 
ment— fond  of  reading  and  writing — and  has  never  had  above, 
two  gentlemen  at  a  time  with  him."  John  Thelwall  had  come 
to  see  Coleridge  one  day,  and  had  turned  up  unexpectedly  at 
Alfoxden.  Could  ordinary  hospitality  have  been  refused  him  ? 
And  would  not  anybody  wish  to  see  so  interesting  a  man  as 


DOROTHY   WORDSWORTH 

BY    W.    CROWBENT 


"THREE   PEOPLE:    ONE   SOUL"  91 

Thelwall  ?  "  Be  assured,  and  I  speak  it  from  my  own  know- 
ledge, that  Mr.  W.,  of  all  men  alive,  is  the  last  who  will  give 
any  one  cause  to  complain  of  his  opinions,  his  conduct,  or  his 
disturbing  the  peace  of  any  one." 

In  spite  of  all,  the  happy  spring  and  early  summer  days 
were  spent  in  the  knowledge  that  the  Wordsworths  were  going 
in  a  few  months.  In  March,  Wordsworth  wrote  to  a  friend, 
saying  that  they  were  "obliged"  to  quit  at  midsummer,  and 
announcing  a  "  delightful  scheme  "  of  going  with  the  Coleridges 
to  Germany  for  a  time.  And  so  it  came  about.  The  Words- 
worths  left  Alfoxden  on  June  26, 1798  ;  they  lingered  in  various 
places  (one  of  them  being  Bristol,  to  superintend  the  printing  of 
Lyrical  Ballads),  and  in  September  they  set  sail  with  Coleridge 
for  Hamburg. 

One  poem  in  Lyrical  Ballads,  the  last  and  greatest  in  the 
volume,  perhaps  the  most  characteristic  breathing  of  the  most 
characteristic  Wordsworth  spirit,  was  made  after  the  Quantocks 
had  been  left  for  ever.*  It  would  be  tedious  to  transcribe  it,  and 
profane  to  mutilate  it.  It  must  be  read  as  a  whole,  and  pondered 
until  it  is  known  and  loved  by  heart.  The  brother  and  sister 
stayed  with  Coleridge  for  a  week  at  Nether  Stowey ;  then  they 
went  to  the  Wye.  Wordsworth  had  been  there  five  years  before  ; 
the  whole  region,  and  especially  Tintern  Abbey,  was  for  him 
alive  with  pensive  reminiscence,  and  prophetic  of  deep  spiritual 
change.  As  he  stood  there  on  that  July  day  of  1798,  he  felt 
within  him  the  drama  of  his  soul ;  the  boyhood  of  animal  enjoy- 
ment ;  the  youth  of  rapture  in  the  sights  and  sounds  of  Nature  ; 
the  jarring  shock  of  humanity  ;  the  restoration  of  faith  and  love  ; 
the  unspeakable  sense  of  God.  And  to  the  great  drama  was 
added  a  wonderful  epilogue,  where  the  brother,  finding  himself 
in  the  sister,  dedicates  her  to  his  own  glorious  fate. 

*  Lines  composed  a  few  miles  above  Tintern  Abbey, 


CHAPTER   V 
ROBERT   SOUTHEY 


:oler, 
ohi: 
liao ' 

ookec 


OF  the  many  eminent  men  who  knew  Wordsworth,  or  were  \^ 
in  any  way  associated  with  him,  it  is  perhaps  hardest  b 
to  define  accurately  the  place  of  Southey  in  the  Wordsworthian  r: 
circle.    He  was  in  it,  yet  not  of  it,  just  as  he  is,  and  yet  is  not,  a  je; 
classic  of  English  literature.    No  great  English  writer  calls  more  It:. 
urgently  for  reconsideration  than  Southey.     He  is  hardly  read 
nowadays  ;  to  few  is  he  much  more  than  a  name ;  yet  he  filled  Ic: 
a  large  space  in  his  time  ;  no  man  ever  worked  harder  or,  in  a  t 
sense,  more  successfully  ;  he  stands  out  as  typical,  both  of  his 
own  age  and  of  the  purely  and  overwhelmingly  literary  tem- 
perament.    There  is  about  him  and  his  career  something  un- 
explained, a  touch  of  paradox,  a  trace  of  the  injustice  of  fame, 
which  makes  him  interesting. 

If  Southey  was  not  quite  in  Wordsworth's  circle,  it  was  not 
for  want  of  excellent  opportunities,  and  it  was  in  spite  of  near  jck: 
neighbourhood.     Wordsworth  settled  at  Grasmere  in  1799,  and   r. : 
Southey  went  to  Greta  Hall,  close  to  Keswick,  in  1803  ;  from  i  at l 
that  year  until  the  cold  March  day  in  1843,  when  the  aged  Words-   les:  ;• 
worth  came  over  the  hills  to  his  friend's  burial  in  Crosthwaite   ad  t. 
churchyard,  the   two   poets,  the  most   home-keeping   of  men,  U 
lived  not  more  than  fifteen  miles  from  one  another,     Southey 
was  only  four  years  Wordsworth's  junior ;   they  were  bound  ;,.. 
together  by  their  common  interest  in  the  Coleridges  (Southey 
and  Coleridge,  we  must  not  forget,  married  sisters)  ;  they  began 
as  revolutionary  idealists,  and  they  became — moving  at  much  }k 
the   same   pace — unbending,   alarmist,   Church-and-State   con-    a: 
servatives ;   they  were,  by  design  and   devotion,  poets — poets 
daring,    original,    independent,    romantic ;    they   felt    for    one 
another   sincere    admiration ;    no   personal    disagreement   ever 

92 


[vr; 


^C. 


t. 


ROBERT   SOUTHEY  93 

rose  to  cloud  their  relationship.  Yet  they  somehow  belong 
0  different  worlds,  and  their  separateness  cannot  be  wholly 
xplained  by  Wordsworth's  unapproachable  elevation.  Words- 
/•orth,  as  we  have  seen,  was  not  closely  akin  to  any  of  his 
ompeers ;  but  Southey  was  much  less  akin  to  him  than 
"oleridge  or  Charles  Lamb,  or  De  Quincey,  much  less  akin 
him  than  Walter  Scott.  He  was  even  less  akin  to  him 
lan  those  younger  romantic  poets,  on  whom  Wordsworth 
Doked  with  so  cold  a  regard,  than  Shelley  and  Keats.  In 
pite  of  his  brilliant  and  versatile  gifts,  in  spite  of  his  being 
o  excellent  a   poet  and    so  admirably  skilled  in    all   literary 

•  Iraftsmanship,  Southey  perhaps  never  entered  Wordsworth's 
:  eal  world  at  any  point.  Yet  it  is  none  the  less  interesting  to 
;  tudy  the  relationships  of  the  two  men,  their  attractions  and 

•  |heir  repulsions. 

;  .  The  criticism  under  whose  lash  they  both  winced,  the 
:  riticism  whose  discipline  fashioned  the  Romantic  Revival,  put 
:  (hem  unhesitatingly  into  the  same  class.  In  the  judgment  of 
:  ,'effrey  and  those  like-minded  with  him,  Southey,  with  Words- 
rarth  and  Coleridge,  made  up  a  sect,  the  sect  to  be  known  as 
he  "  Lake  School."  Reviewing  Thalaba,  the  Edinburgh  said  : 
The  author  .  .  .  belongs  to  a  sect  of  poets,  that  has 
stablished  itself  in  this  country  within  these  ten  or  twelve  ^ 
'•ears,  and  is  looked  upon,  we  believe,  as  one  of  its  chief 
hampions  and  apostles."  At  best,  this  statement  is  only 
rery  partially  true.  In  so  far  as  there  was  any  sectarian  pact 
it  all,  it  was  made  between  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth  in  the 
vest  country*in  1797-8,  when  Lyrical  Ballads  came  into  being; 
md  we  know  to  what  a  very  small  extent,  after  all,  even 
Lyrical  Ballads  was  a  party-manifesto.  Between  1795  and  1803 
jouthey  was  working  on  wholly  independent  lines,  and  far  from 
he  theories  to  be  unfolded  in  Wordsworth's  Prefaces  and  in 
Biographia  Literaria.  He  made  two  journeys  to  Portugal, 
vhich  had  a  decisive  influence  on  his  genius,  giving  colour  to 
lis  fancy,  disposing  him  to  Spanish  and  Portuguese  learning, 
md  opening  a  rich  and  unworked  vein  to  his  wonderful 
iterary  industry.  He  was  producing  poetry  during  those 
rears,  more  assiduously  and  abundantly  than  Wordsworth  and 
Coleridge,  and  with  quite  as  much  enthusiasm,  though  with 
different  inspiration.     Four  practical  enterprises  belong  to  that 


94  WORDSAVORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

time  :  a  long  epic  called  Joan  of  Arc ;  a  mass  of  short  miscel- 
laneous ballads,  metrical  tales  and  eclogues  ;  the  romantic 
narrative  poem  called  Thalaba  the  Destroyer,  published  in 
1801  ;  and  the  equally  romantic  Madoc,  written  before  Thalaba, 
though  not  published  until  1805.  Through  Joan  of  Arc,  con- 
ceived and  partly  written  while  Southey  was  still  a  Balliol 
undergraduate,  at  the  time,  that  is,  when  he  was  closely 
associated  with  Coleridge,  he  came  nearest,  perhaps,  to  enrol- 
ment in  the  new  brotherhood  of  song.  Coleridge  was  not  only 
deeply  interested  in  the  venture,  but  himself  contributed  to 
its  pages  a  long  insertion  in  the  second  book,  afterwards  with- 
drawn, and  republished  as  The  Destiny  of  Nations.  Charles 
Lamb,  who,  if  the  world  had  not  appropriated  him,  might  be 
claimed  as  the  great  critic  among  the  brotherhood,  hailed 
Southey's  first  epic  with  a  shout  which  we  can  still  hear. 
Writing  to  Coleridge  in  the  summer  of  1796  he  says,  "  With 
Joan  of  Arc  I  have  been  delighted,  amazed.  .  .  .  Why,  the 
poem  is  alone  sufficient  to  redeem  the  character  of  the  age  we 
live  in  from  the  imputation  of  degenerating  in  Poetry,  were 
there  no  such  beings  extant  as  Burns  [it  was  a  month  before 

Burns's  death]  and  Bowles,  Cowper,  and ;  fill  up  the  blank 

how  you  please;  I  say  nothing.  ...  On  the  whole,  I  expect 
Southey  one  day  to  rival  Milton  :  I  already  deem  him  equal  to 
Cowper,  and  superior  to  all  living  poets  besides."  If  we  ignore 
chronology,  and  reflect  on  where  Southey  stands  now  in  the 
temple  of  fame,  we  shall  be  disposed  to  find  a  sly  jest  in  the 
last  sentence.  But  there  is  no  jest  about  it ;  there  were  no 
Lyrical  Ballads  as  yet,  no  Ancient  Mariner,  and  no  Christabel, 
and  Lamb  meant  every  word  he  said.  And  indeed  Joan  made 
an  epoch ;  it  is  a  spirited  narrative  poem,  of  almost  epic 
dimensions — really  the  first  serious  epic  since  Paradise  Regained ; 
on  a  noble  theme  and  written  in  correct  and  spirited  blank 
verse.  How  could  even  Charles  Lamb  know  just  what  was 
going  to  happen,  and  how  the  currents  were  to  set  ? 

Southey's  preface  to  Joan  of  Arc  shows  all  the  brisk  self- 
consciousness  of  the  innovator  or  restorer.  Not  less  interesting 
in  their  promise  and  animation  were  some  of  the  shorter  poems 
which  he  was  composing  while  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  were 
busy  in  the  Quantocks.  These  show  a  clear,  but  distant, 
cousinly   relationship    to   the   Lyrical  Ballads  and   their  like. 


■Xietr, 


'tit! 


ROBERT   SOUTHEY  95 

First,  there  are  the  ballads,  of  some  of  which,  and  especially  of 
The  Battle  of  Blenheim  and  Mary^  the  Maid  of  the  Inn,  one  is 
:ired  of  hearing  that  they  are  the  only  things  of  Southey's  that 
ive.  They  are,  indeed,  excellent  specimens  of  the  balladist's 
irt,  rapid  and  interesting  in  narrative  movement,  clear  in  mean- 
ing, fascinating  in  metre,  touched  here  and  there  with  true 
Dathos,  true  horror,  and  true  humour.  Many  of  them,  e.g.  The 
Old  Woman  of  Berkeley^  are,  of  course,  artificial,  they  are  imita- 
;ions  of  an  old  form,  rather  than  like  the  Aftciejtt  Mariner  or 
Christahely  new  creations  in  a  restored  form.  None  of  them  is 
imaginative  in  the  sense  in  which  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth 
intended  to  be  imaginative  in  their  joint  endeavours.  Yet  their 
simplicity,  their  lucidity,  their  vivacity,  their  first-rate  style 
make  them  worthy  instances  of  Romanticism,  in  so  far  as 
Romanticism  means  the  restoration  to  poetry  of  spontaneity,  of 
simplicity,  of  "  natural "  as  opposed  to  "  poetic  "  diction. 

One  section  of  Southey's  miscellaneous  poems,  the  English 
Eclogues^  stand  in  a  class  by  themselves.     They  are  an  experi- 
ment, deliberately  and  self-consciously  made,  in  imitation  of 
German  models,  and  in  a  form  which  Southey  believed  to  be 
tvithout   precedent   in   English.      They   are   a   contribution   to 
pastoral  poetry  in  the  widest  sense  of  that  comprehensive  term 
j— poetry,  that  is,  like  the  Bucolics  of  Virgil,  expressed  in  the 
'psissima  verba  of  simple  folk  talking  among  themselves  about 
:he   simple  concerns  of  a  country  neighbourhood.      In   these 
ittempts  of   Southey's   the  cousinly  likeness  to  Wordsworth- 
anism  is  very  marked.     They  are  not  very  successful,  for  much 
he  same  reason,  perhaps,  that  Wordsworth  was   not   always 
uccessful ;  simplicity  is  pursued  at  the  expense,  sometimes,  of 
he  dignity  and  beauty  without  which  verse  is  not  poetry. 

"  When  the  Doctor  sent  him 
Abroad  to  try  the  air,  it  made  me  certain 
That  all  was  over.    There's  but  little  hope, 
Methinks,  that  foreign  parts  can  help  a  man 
When  his  own  mother-country  will  not  do." 

There  is  a  great  deal  of  this  kind  of  thing  in  Southey's 
Eclogues.  Yet  Charles  Lamb  liked  some  of  them  "  mightily," 
or  their  "  pictures  "  and  **  realities."  The  last  word,  we  feel,  is 
veil  chosen.  It  is  by  their  realism  that  they  count ;  and 
ealism  was  one  of  the  triumphs  of  the  Romantic  Revival. 


96  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

For  high  success  in  the  pure  lyric  of  self-revelation  and 
self-relief,  Southey  had  not  enough  tenderness,  not  enough 
humanity.  Nor,  though  he  was  a  master  of  expression  in 
verse,  and  had  a  fine  gift  of  phrasing,  had  he  the  unfailing 
taste  and  felicity  which  such  poetry  requires.  Thus,  in  The 
Dead  Friend,  a  lyric  which  just  falls  short  of  being  beautiful 
and  yet  has  no  throb  of  real  pain,  the  same  poet  who  writes — 

"  Not  to  the  grave,  not  to  the  grave,  my  soul, 
Follow  thy  friend  beloved. 
The  spirit  is  not  there  !  " 

which  is  at  least  as  good  as  Longfellow  at  his  best,  is  capable  o; 
writing — 

"  How  sweet  it  were  with  powers 
Such  as  the  Cherubim 
To  view  the  depth  of  Heaven  ! " 

which  even  Longfellow  would  hardly  have  allowed  himself  t< 
put  down. 

The  Edinburgh  Review^  then,  misconceived  Southey  whei 
it  made  him  the  champion  and  apostle  of  the  Lake  School  ii 
so  far  as  that  school  consisted  of  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge 
co-operating  for  the  reform  of  English  poetry.     In  1809,  Byroi 
entered  the  field  of  the  poetry  and  criticism  of  the  Romanti" 
Revival  with  his  English  Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers,     Tw( 
years  before  he  had  published  his  juvenile  Hotcrs  of  Idleness 
and   had   been    soundly   punished   for   it   by   the   Edinburgh, 
English  Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers  was  his  rejoinder ;  and  ; 
very  interesting  rejoinder  it  is.     Throughout  his  clever  satire 
Byron,  with   the  egotistic   malevolence  which  always  haunteij 
him,  runs  with  the  hare  and  hunts  with  the  hounds.     Himself  ijl  I: 
true  product  of  Romanticism,  he  attacks  the  best  phases  o^^ 
Romanticism  with  all  Jeffrey's  aversion  and  a  thousand  time 
Jeffrey's  spite.     First  of  all,  Walter  Scott,  who  yielded  after 
wards  with  such  sweet  grace  to  the  glaringly  popular  Byron  Cx 
Childe    Harold,   Scott,  whose   Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel  aniia 
Mar7nion  will  be  read  and  loved,  we  may  safely  predict.  Ion. 
after  the  Giaour  and  Lara  are  forgotten,  is  consigned  to  limbt 
This  is  how  Byron  treats  the  noble  Marmion — 

"  Next  view  in  state,  proud  prancing  on  his  roan, 
The  golden-crested  haughty  Marmion, 


i 


ROBERT  SOUTHEY  97 

Now  forging  scrolls,  now  foremost  in  the  fight 

Not  quite  a  felon,  yet  but  half  a  knight, 

The  gibbet  or  the  field  prepared  to  grace  ; 

A  mighty  mixture  of  the  great  and  base. 

And  think'st  thou,  Scott  !  by  vain  conceit  perchance, 

On  public  taste  to  foist  thy  stale  romance  ? 

No  !  when  the  sons  of  song  descend  to  trade, 
Their  bays  are  sear,  their  former  laurels  fade. 
Let  such  forgo  the  poet's  sacred  name, 
Who  rack  their  brains  for  lucre,  not  for  fame  ; 
Still  for  stern  Mammon  may  they  toil  in  vain  ! 
And  sadly  gaze  on  gold  they  cannot  gain  ! 


For  this  we  spurn  Apollo's  venal  son, 
And  bid  a  long  '  good  night  to  Marmion.' " 


Then  comes  Southey's  turn.  He  is  a  "  ballad-monger,"  who 
pours  forth  spurious  epics,  which  claim  to  be  on  a  level  with 
the  work  of  Homer,  Virgil,  Milton,  and  Tasso.  Thalaba,  as  a 
hero,  is  the  rival  of  Tom  Thumb.  Madoc  is  a  tissue  of 
travellers'  tales.  Byron  deprecates  the  coming  Curse  of 
KeJiama^  in  which  Southey's  poetic  power  culminated — 

"  Oh  !     Southey  !     Southey  !  cease  thy  varied  song  ! 
A  bard  may  chant  too  often  and  too  long  : 
As  thou  art  strong  in  verse,  in  mercy  spare  ! 
A  fourth,  alas  !  were  more  than  we  could  bear. 
But  if,  in  spite  of  all  the  world  can  say, 
Thou  still  wilt  verseward  plod  thy  weary  way  ; 
If  still  in  Berkeley  ballads  most  uncivil. 
Thou  wilt  devote  old  women  to  the  devil, 
The  babe  unborn  thy  dread  intent  may  rue ; 
God  help  thee,  Southey,  and  thy  readers  too." 

In  1 8 13,  Southey  was  made  Poet  Laureate,  his  only  rival 
being  Scott,  who,  of  course,  worked  for  Southey  rather  than  for 
[limself.  His  success  in  this  respect  did  not  sweeten  towards 
tiim  the  jealous  soul  of  Byron.  In  18 18,  Byron  dedicated  to 
the  Laureate  the  first  instalment  of  Don  yuan.  He  still 
regarded  Southey  as  a  "Laker/'  and  lumped  him  up  with 
Coleridge  and  Wordsworth  in  the  old  uncritical  way — 

"  And  now,  my  Epic  Renegade  !  what  are  ye  at  ? 
With  all  the  Lakers,  in  and  out  of  place  ? 
A  nest  of  tuneful  persons,  to  my  eye 
Like  four-and-twenty  blackbirds  in  a  pye." 


98  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE  1 

"  You— Gentlemen  !  by  dint  of  long  seclusion  I 

From  better  company,  have  kept  your  own 

At  Keswick,  and,  through  still  continued  fusion 
Of  one  another's  minds,  at  last  have  groNvn 

To  deem,  as  a  most  logical  conclusion. 
That  Poesy  has  wreaths  for  you  alone  ; 

There  is  a  narrowness  in  such  a  notion, 

Which  makes  me  wish  you'd  change  your  lakes  for  ocean." 


it: ;: ' 


fiiic;' 


fc 


K.K 


t'eer; 


Coleridge  knew  better ;  and  he,  at  least,  was  a  great  critic 

with  no  envy  in  his  heart.     In  his  BiograpJda  Literaria  he  finds: 

in  their  treatment  of  Southey  one  of  the  chief  condemnations  01^ 

the  critics.     He  ridicules  the  notion  that  the  Lakists  were  ir 

any  real  sense  a  mutual  admiration  society.     He  shows  thai; 

the   critics  condemned    Southey   by   the    easy  process,  before^ 

which  no  poetry  could  stand,  of  exhibiting  its  weaker  sidej 

only.     *'  He  who  tells  me  that  there  are  defects  in  a  new  work 

tells  me  nothing  which  I  should  not  have   taken    for  granteci 

without  his  information.     But  he  who  points  out  and  elucidatejjrw  >> 

the  beauties  of  an  original  work,  does  indeed  give  me  interesting 

information,  such  as  experience  would  not  have  authorized  me 

in  anticipating."     The  latter  was  by  no  means  the  method  Oj 

Jeffrey  and  the  rest.     What  should  we  have  learned  from  thenri 

of  "the  pastoral  claims  and  wild  streaming  lights  of  Thalaba^ 

of  the  "full  blaze  of  the  Kehama  (a  gallery  of  finished  pici 

tares  in  one  splendid  fancy  piece,  in  which,  notwithstanding 

the  moral  grandeur  rises  gradually  above  the  brilliance  of  th<' 

colouring  and  the  boldness  and  novelty  of  the  machinery);'; 

the  "  more  sober  beauties  "  of  Madoc ;  what  of  the  Roderick,  "  ii] 

which,  retaining  all  his  former  excellencies  of  a  poet  eminently 

inventive  and  picturesque,  he  has  surpassed  himself  in  language 

and  metre,  in  the  construction  of  the  whole,  and  in  the  splen; 

dour  of  particular  passages"?     Such  is  Coleridge's  estimate, 

in  which  it  is  impossible  not  to  feel  some  of  the  generous  over 

praise   of  kindness.     But   he  arrives  at  a   general   conclusioi- 

which   twentieth-century  readers  of    Southey  will  be  slow  t 

quarrel  with.     "His   prose   is   always  intelligible   and   alway 

entertaining.     In  poetry  he  has  attempted  almost  every  specie 

of  composition  known  before,  and  he  has  added  new  ones  ;  anc'  \ 

if  we  except  the  highest  lyric  (in  which  how  few,  how  very  fev;  i 

even   of   the   greatest    minds    have    been   fortunate),   he    ha;  j 

attempted  every  species  successfully." 


ROBERT  SOUTHEY  99 

Men  of  high   intelligence  in  a  later  generation,  men  like 
Cardinal   Newman    and    Dean    Stanley,   knew   the   worth    of 
Southey's  poetry ;  and  even   Carlyle  knew  it,  though  he  was 
wont  to  praise  his  verse-making  contemporaries  with  a  grudge. 
But  it  remained  the  correct  thing  to  dispraise  Southey.     When 
Macaulay  brought  up   his   tremendous   reinforcements    to  the 
Edmbii?'gk,  he  had  occasion  to  review  there  Southey's  Colloquies 
in    1830.      Southey's    Colloquies   concern   social    and    political 
matters;   and  in   1830  Southey  was  a  tenacious  and   uncom- 
promising Tory,  while  Macaulay  was  alive  with  the  Whiggism 
which  was  to  carry  the  first  Reform   Bill.     His  quarrel  with 
;  Southey  is  therefore  only  partly  literary  ;  and,  indeed,  when  he 
comes  face  to  face  with  the  characterization  of  his  poetry,  he 
has  to  mingle  praise  with  blame  and  honour  with  contempt. 
"  His  longer  poems,  though  full  of  faults,  are  nevertheless  very 
;  extraordinary  productions.     We   doubt   greatly   whether   they 
•  will  be  read  fifty  years  hence ;  but  that,  if  they  are  read,  they 
[  will  be  admired,  we  have  no  doubt  whatever." 

There  are  many  points  of  resemblance  between  the  literary 
'  careers  of  Southey  and  Walter  Scott.     Both  men  were  prodigies 
of  literary  industry  and   miscellaneous   literary  ability.     Both 
'  were  laid  hold  of  in  youth  by  the  fires  of  the  Romantic  move- 
ment; both  won  their  first  reputation  as  brilliant  poets;  both 
were    Quarterly   Reviewers ;    both    forsook    poetry    for    prose. 
The   differences    between    the    men    help    us    to    understand 
Southey's  comparative  failure.     So  far  as  the   mere  manage- 
;  ment  of  prose,  the  mere  general  mechanism  of  expression,  is 
»  concerned,  Southey  was  a  much  better  writer  than  Scott.     His 
■  English  is  much  more  terse,  more  nervous,  more  oligosyllabic, 
than  Scott's.     But  this  superiority,  as  we  know,  is  but  dust  in 
the  balance  compared  with  Scott's  achievement  as  a  writer  of 
fiction,  by  virtue  of  which  he  sits  for  ever  in  the  front  rank  on  a 
golden  throne.     "All  is  great  in  the  Waverley  Novels,"  said 
Goethe ;  "  material,  effects,  characters,  execution  ; "  and  in  the 
!  sense  of  such  greatness,  the  sense  of  Scott's  deficiencies  in  style 
disappears,  and  we  see  how  low  is  Southey's  stature  beside  his. 
In  poetry  the  disparity  is  less  great.     Both  Southey  and  Scott 
'  are  in  a  rank  below  the  highest  in  nineteenth-century  poetry  ; 
this  was  maintained,  much  too  emphatically,  in  their  lifetime  ; 
,  it  is  amply  recognized  still.     Both  were  narrative  poets  ;  both 


100  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CHICLE 

were  successful  balladists  ;  both  were  poets  of  romantic  incident.'^ 
In  many  respects  Scott's  poetry  is  inferior  to  Southey's :  it 
shows  less  metrical  and  stylistic  resource ;  it  is  much  less 
learned,  less  complex,  less  artistic.  Yet  for  those  very  reasons 
it  was  more  popular  when  it  appeared,  and  for  those  reasons  it 
still  lives,  while  Southey's  needs  to  be  revived.  Its  life  lies  in 
its  spontaneity,  its  simplicity,  its  gush  and  flow,  its  reliance  on 
the  essential,  and  sempiternal  interest  of  romance.  In  a  word 
it  is  human  and  natural  poetry,  while  Southey's  is,  to  a  large 
extent,  preterhuman  and  artificial. 

And  indeed  the  deficiency  of  Southey's  poetry  was  also  a 
deficiency  of  his  personality — a  deficiency  in  the  human  and 
natural.  Through  excellent  portraits  and  ample  autobiographical 
and  biographical  evidence,  we  can  reach  that  personality,  and 
get  to  pretty  close  quarters  with  it.     Let  us  try  to  do  so  now. 

A  tall  spare  man,  with  dark  complexion,  dark  curling  hair, 
and  the  hazel  eyes  which  so  often  go  with  that  colouring,  is,  by 
general  consent,  the  Southey  of  authentic  portraits  and  con- 
temporary descriptions.  A  bold  fine  face  it  must  have  been, 
striking  rather  than  winning,  with  strongly  pencilled  eyebrows, 
aquiline  nose,  and  full  lips,  the  eyes  keen,  not  sweet,  and  the 
head  habitually  carried  high,  with  the  chin  forwards.  It  would 
be  difficult  to  imagine  a  physiognomy  more  unlike  that  of  his 
house-mate,  Coleridge,  with  his  "  heaven-eyes "  and  flabby 
irresoluteness  of  mien.  Southey's  manner  seems  to  have  im- 
pressed observers  by  its  combination  of  agreeableness  and 
reserve.  Two  acute  critics  and  picturesque  describers  of  person- 
ality, De  Ouincey  and  Carlyle,  have  transmitted  their  im- 
pressions. De  Ouincey  first  saw  him  at  Greta  Hall,  in  1807, 
when  Southey  had  not  been  many  years  settled  there,  and  was 
thirty-three.  De  Quincey,  like  all  men  and  women  who  wield 
picturesque  pens,  was  apt  to  detract,  even  in  describing  his 
heroes ;  but  he  does  not  write  detractingly  of  Southey.  The 
carriage  of  his  head  suggested  to  De  Quincey  that  he  con- 
templated abstractions,  and  was  an  aspiring  man.  There  was 
"a  serene  and  gentle  pride"  in  his  face,  chastened  by  manifest 
modesty  and  reverence.  His  bearing  was  courteous  ;  and  yet  he 
was  hardly  genial.  "  The  point  in  which  Southey's  manner  failed 
the  most  in  conciliating  regard,  was,  perhaps,  in  what  related  to 
the  external  expressions  of  friendliness.  .  .  .   There  was  an  air 


ROBERT   SOUTHEY    IX   179S 

FROM    THE    DRAWING    BY    HANCOCK    IN    THE    NATIOXAI.    PORTRAIT    GALLERY 


ROBERT  SOUTHEY  101 

of  distance  and  reserve  about  him — the  reserve  of  a  lofty,  self- 
respecting  mind,  but,  perhaps,  a  little  too  freezing,  in  his  treat- 
I  ment  of  all  persons  who  were  not  amongst  the  corps  of  his 
I  ancient  fireside  friends."     Nothing  in  later  and  frequent  inter- 
'  course   changed    De    Quincey's    first    impression    of  Southey. 
There  remained  the  sense  of  his  amiability  and  serenity  ;  of  his 
j  rectitude,  of  his  courtesy  in  speech,  and  gentleness  in  judgment ; 
and  there  remained  also  the  sense  of  chilling  reserve.     There 
remained,  above  all,  the  sense  of  his  extraordinary  hookishness^ 
I  his  literary  industry  and  literary  preoccupation.     Although  De 
Quincey,  in  personal  intercourse,  thought  him,  in  some  respects, 
:  Wordsworth's  moral  superior,  less  monopolizing  in  conversation, 
i  less  self-complacent  and  intolerant,  more  charitable,  considerate, 
and  chivalrous,  he  felt  that  the  bookishness  of  his  interests  and 
talk  made  him  a  less  comfortable  companion.     His  library,  De 
Quincey  alleged,  was  his  wife,  his  true  love  which  had  his  heart. 
Besides,  he  was  not  so  expansive  a  talker  as  Wordsworth  ;  he 
was  more  epigrammatic,  more  aphoristic,  and  therefore  apt  to 
make  his  interlocutor  often  feel  that  the  conversational  account 
was  closed. 

Carlyle's  record   of  Southey  is  more  interesting   than   De 
Quincey's.     His  praise  is  quite  as  cordial ;  and  somewhat  rare 
was   Carlyle's  cordial  praise  of  a  contemporary,   especially   a' 
contemporary  man  of  letters.     His  gift  for  character-sketching 
was   greater  and   more   fascinating   than    De   Quincey's.     De 
Quincey,  too,  as  himself  a  Lakist,  might  be  expected   to  be 
hampered,   in   writing   about   a   Lake   poet,   by   some    of   the 
trammels  of  artificial  brotherhood.     But  Carlyle's  representa- 
tions in   this  matter,  were  wholly  "  without  prejudice,"  except 
that  it  was  his  cue  to  belittle  all  versifiers  of  his  own  day. 
I      Carlyle  first  encountered   Southey  in  the  early  days  of  his 
London  life  in  the  thirties,  before  and  after  his  French  Revolu- 
tion came  out,  when  Southey  was  in  his  sixties,  and  nearing  the 
end  of  the  journey.     The  two  men  met  at  the  house  of  Henry 
Taylor,  author  of  Philip  Van  Artevelde,  that  noble  link  between 
two  generations  of  English  letters.    Carlyle  was  doubly  interested 
in  Southey.     As  a  young  Radical,  he  had  sympathized  in  the 
outcry  against  the  poet  as  a  renegade  from  his  early  republican 
principles.     Later,  when  that  phase  of  opinion  had  passed  away 
'or  ever,  Carlyle  got  to  know  Southey's  poetry,  and  to  think  of 


102  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS    CIRCLE 

it  with  the  admiration  it  deserves.     "  I  much  recognize,"  wrote 
Carlyle  in  his  deh'ghtful  idiom,  "the  piety,   the   gentle   deep 
affection,  the  reverence  for  God  and  man,  which  reigned  in  these 
pieces :  full  of  soft  pity,  like  the  wailings  of  a  mother,  and  yet 
with  a  clang  of  chivalrous  valour  finely  audible  too."     Carlyle 
went  to  Henry  Taylor's  in  the  evening,  when  he  and  Southey 
had  finished  a  tete-a-tete  dinner,  and  were  taking  their  wine  in  a 
ground-floor  room  "  somewhere  near  Downing  Street,  and  look- 
ing into  St.  James's  Park."     "  Southey  was  a  man  towards  well 
up  in  the  fifties  [he  must  have  been  really  over  sixty]  ;  hair  grey, 
not  yet  hoary,  well  setting  off  his  fine  clear  brown  complexion ; 
head  and  face  both  smallish,  as  indeed  the  figure  was  while 
seated  ;  features  finely  cut ;  eyes,  brow,  mouth  good  in  their 
kind — expressive  all,  and  even  vehemently  so,  but  betokening 
rather  keenness  than  depth  either  of  intellect  or  character ;  a 
serious,  human,  honest,  but  sharp    almost    fierce-looking  thin 
man,  with  very  much  of  the  militant  in  his  aspect, — in  the  eyes 
especially  was  visible  a  mixture  of  sorrow  and  of  anger,  or  of 
angry  contempt,  as  if  his  indignant  fight  with  the  world  had  not 
yet  ended  in  victory,  but  also  never  should  \sic\  in  defeat."     In 
the  course  of  this  first  conversation  Southey  quoted  Praed — a 
fact  which  Carlyle  (whom  Praed  had  not  the  good  fortune  tc 
please)  thought  *'  tragic."     When  Southey  rose  from  his  chair 
Carlyle  first  realized  that  he  was  tall.     He  was  "all  legs,  ir 
shape  and  stature  like  a  pair  of  tongs."     Subsequent  meetings 
and  conversations  made  Carlyle  like  Southey  more  and  more 
and  he  was  especially  gratified  by  his  unexpected  approval  oi 
his  French  Revolution.     In    those   later   talks   Carlyle    noticec 
Southey's  careworn  anxious  look,  and  how  his  eyes  "  were  a; 
if  filled  with  gloomy  bewilderment  and  incurable  sorrows."   Onc(  ^-.^r. 
he  called  on  Carlyle  at  Cheyne  Row — Miss  Isabella  Fenwicl 
(of  whom  we  shall  hear  later  as  a  friend  of  Wordsworth),  a  con 
nection  of  Sir  Henry  Taylor,  and  very  fond  of  men  of  letters 
coming  with  him.     It  was  an  unfortunate  moment  for  a  digni 
fied  visit  ;  Mrs.  Carlyle  was  marmalade-making  over  the  parlou 
fire,  which  was  "  brisker  "  than  that  in  the  kitchen,  when  suddenl; 
the  big  brass  pan  boiled  over,  and  the  chimney  caught  fire  i: 
the  blaze.     We  can  fancy  the  scene :  Mrs.  Carlyle  heroicall 
snatching  the  pan  off  the  fire,  and  Carlyle  himself,  hastily  sumji 
moned  from  his  writing-table,  "letting  down  the  grate  valv< 


ROBERT  SOUTHEY  103 

and  cutting  quite  off  the  supply  of  oxygen  or  atmosphere/* 
when  there  sounded,  with  a  voice  of  thunder,  Southey's  and 
Miss  Fenwick's  knock  at  the  street  door  !  Carlyle  remembered 
"  how  daintily  "  his  wife  "  made  the  salutations,  brief  quizzical 
bit  of  explanation,  got  the  wreck  to  vanish  ;  and  sat  down  as 
member  of  our  little  party."  The  two  men  talked  of  Shelley, 
with  a  great  deal  of  admirable  morality  at  his  expense,  but 
apparently  concurring  in  a  total  lack  of  insight  into  his  intellec- 
tual and  literary  worth. 

One  final  interview  there  was,  icte-d-tcte  in  the  evening,  at 
Henry  Taylor's.     They  sat  on  a  sofa,  and  bewailed  the  strides 

I  of  democracy,  persuading  themselves  apparently  that  they — the 
sombre,  conventional  Tory  and  the  paradoxical,  hero-worship- 

;  ping  humorist,  Radical,  essentially,  in  every  fibre — had  the  same 
point  of  view.     Then  they  exchanged  their  last  farewell. 

It  is  impossible  to  resist  quoting  almost  verbatim  Carlyle's 
summing-up  of  Southey  :  "  I  used  to  construe  him  to  myself  as 
a  man  of  slight  build,  but  of  sound  and  elegant ;  with  consider- 
able genius  in  him,  considerable  faculty  of  speech  and  rhythmic 
insight,  and  with  a  morality  that  shone  distinguished  among  his 
contemporaries."  Carlyle  had  noticed  how  the  colour  came  and 
went  on  Southey's  dark  face.  "  I  reckoned  him  (with  those 
blue  blushes  and  those  red)  to  be  the  perhaps  excitablest  of  all 
men  ;  and  that  a  deep  mute  monition  of  conscience  had  spoken 

I  to   him,  '  You  are  capable  of  running  mad,  if  you  don't  take 

\  care.  Acquire  habitudes  ;  stick  firm  as  adamant  to  them  at  all 
times,  and  work,  continually  work ! '     This,  for  thirty  or  forty 

;  years,  he  had  punctually  and  impetuously  done ;    no  man  so 

;  habitual,  we  were  told  ;  gave  up  his  poetry  at  a  given  hour,  on 
stroke  of  the  clock,  and  took  to  prose,  etc.,  etc.  ;  and,  as  to 

i  diligence  and  velocity,  employed  his  very  walking  hours,  walked 
with  a  book  in  his  hand  ;  and  by  these  methods  of  his,  had  got 

[  through  perhaps  a  greater  amount  of  work,  counting  quantity 
and  quality,  than  any  other  man  whatever  in  those  years  of  his  ; 
till  all  suddenly  ended.     I  likened  him  to  one  of  those  huge 

;  sandstone  grinding  cylinders  which  I  had  seen  at  Manchester, 
turning  with  inconceivable  velocity.  .  .  .  screaming  harshly,  and 
shooting  out  each  of  them  its  sheet  of  fire  .  .  .  beautiful  sheets 
of  fire  .  .  .  when  you  look  from  rearward.  For  many  years 
these  stones  grind  so,  at  such  a  rate,  till  at  last  (in  some  cases) 


104  WORDS^VORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

comes  a  moment  when  the  stone's  cohesion  is  quite  worn  out, 
overcome  by  the  stupendous  velocity  long  continued  ;  and  while 
grinding  its  fastest,  it  flies  off  altogether,  and  settlrs  some  yards 
from  you,  a  grinding-stone  no  longer,  but  a  cartload  of  quiet  sand." 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  much  in  this  bright  sketch  is 
true  to  the  real  Southey,  and  it  is  in  full  agreement  with  the 
lazy  traditional  second  or  third  hand  estimate  of  him.  Yet  it 
does  not  satisfy  the  inquirer.  The  mere  regularity,  for  example  ; 
why  should  it  always  be  quoted  as  being  vaguely  to  Southey's 
discredit }  There  is,  after  all,  no  demerit  in  stopping  one's  work 
when  the  clock  strikes,  even  if  the  work  should  chance  to  be 
poetry.  It  is  not  self-evident  that  poetry  ought  to  be  composed 
in  a  trance  or  amid  chaos.  The  implication,  of  course,  is  that 
Southey's  output  was  inferior ;  that  the  incessant  grinding, 
the  monotonous  regularity,  produced  nothing  equivalent  to  the 
effort.  But  inferiority  is  relative  ;  it  was  not  easy  to  be  the 
contemporary  of  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge.  There  is  always 
some  absurdity  in  being  Poet  Laureate  when  other  men  are 
producing  immeasurably  better  poetry  than  you  are  yourself. 
But  it  is  nothing  to  posterity  that  Southey  happened  to  be 
Laureate ;  what  posterity  wants  is  to  ascertain  his  absolute 
rank. 

Carlyle's  version  of  Southey's  industry,  at  all  events,  is  true. 
Southey's  characteristic  life  and  life-work  began  with  his 
settlement  at  Greta  Hall  in  1803,  when  he  was  thirty.  It 
was  just  nine  years  since  the  romantic  revolutionary  had  made 
Coleridge's  acquaintance  at  Oxford  ;  just  eight  since  he  and 
Coleridge  had  married  respectively  Edith  and  Sarah  Fricker 
at  Bristol.  His  youth  was  over ;  his  intellectual  wild  oats 
were  sown  ;  Portugal  and  things  Portuguese  and  Spanish  had 
made  their  mark  on  him  ;  he  was  apart,  he  was  dedicated, 
pledged,  to  the  literary  life,  pure  and  simple.  Therefore,  when 
Coleridge,  who  had  made  Greta  Hall  at  least  his  wife's  home, 
asked  the  Southeys  to  come  and  share  the  quiet  mansion  on 
its  knoll  under  Skiddaw,  and  in  sound  of  Greta  and  Derwent, 
Southey  felt  that  the  call  must  be  obeyed.  It  was  indeed  a 
potent  call !  For,  once  settled  at  Greta  Hall,  Southey  never 
left  it  until  he  was  carried,  forty  years  after,  to  his  grave  in 
Crosthwaite  churchyard,  hardly  a  mile  off. 

Those   were   the   forty   years   of   the    industry  which    has 


fcc 


e;: 


^:: 


ROBERT   SOUTHEY  105 

become  a  proverb.  "Imagine  me,"  he  wrote  once,  "in  this 
great  study  of  mine  from  breakfast  till  dinner,  from  dinner 
till  tea,  and  from  tea  till  supper,  in  my  old  black  coat,  my 
corduroys  alternately  with  the  long  worsted  pantaloons  and 
gaiters  in  one,  and  the  green  shade,  and  sitting  at  my  desk, 
and  you  have  my  picture  and  my  history."  It  was  never 
different.  All  that  has  to  be  added  is  the  leisurely  walk  in 
fine  weather,  book  in  hand,  always  with  full  enjoyment  of  the 
scenery.  "I  have  seen  a  sight,"  he  wrote  in  February,  1804, 
"more  dreamy  and  wonderful  than  fancy  ever  yet  devised  for 
fairyland.  We  had  walked  down  to  the  lake  side ;  it  was  a 
delightful  day,  the  sun  shining,  and  a  few  white  clouds  hanging 
motionless  in  the  sky.  .  .  .  The  surface  of  the  lake  was  so 
perfectly  still,  that  it  became  one  great  mirror  and  all  its 
waters  disappeared.  ...  As  I  stood  on  the  shore,  heaven 
and  the  clouds  seemed  lying  under  me ;  I  was  looking  down 
into  the  sky  ...  it  seemed  like  an  abyss  of  sky  before  me, 
not  fog  and  clouds  from  a  mountain,  but  the  blue  heaven 
spotted  with  a  few  fleecy  pillows  of  cloud,  that  looked  placed 
there  for  angels  to  rest  upon  them."  In  such  things  Southey 
took  daily  delight. 

If  Southey's  library  was  his  wife ;  though  he  loved  books 
with  such  devotion  that  when,  before  the  end,  the  power  of 
reading  forsook  him,  he  would  take  down  his  volumes  from 
the  shelves  and  kiss  them,  we  must  not  forget  that  he  was 
a  domestic  man  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  word.  He  was  twice 
married  ;  he  had  children  of  his  own,  through  whom  he  had 
keen  happiness  and  keen  pain  ;  and  the  Coleridges,  Hartley, 
Derwent,  and  Sara,  spent  their  childhood  and  youth  at  Greta 
Hall.  Southey's  letters,  not  letters  of  genius  like  Charles 
Lamb's,  and  without  the  delicate  flavour  and  odour  of  Cowper's, 
show,  with  a  perfect  transparency,  the  depths  of  a  life  as  happy 
in  its  play  as  it  was  strenuous  in  its  industry,  and  faultless  in 
its  regularity.  Southey's  humour  was  hardly  so  abundant  as 
to  overflow  into  his  writings  ;  but  it  was  genuine  enough  to 
make  his  home  a  happy  place  for  his  children,  and  even  for 
himself.  Southey  was  not  a  constitutionally  happy  man.  Carlyle 
noticed  the  sorrow  and  anger  in  his  eyes,  and  the  shiftings  of 
colour  on  his  face  even  on  the  threshold  of  old  age ;  and  he 
shrewdly   reckoned  that  behind   and  beneath  the  chill  reserve 


106  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CHICLE 

of  manner,  perilously  unstable  nerves  were  on   the   tremble. 
Throughout  his  life  Southey  suffered  the  drawbacks  of  a  neurotic 
temperament.     In  his  youth  he  had   dreams,  unfed  with  any 
opium,  which  were  almost  worthy  to  rank  with  De  Quincey's ; 
and  which  help  to  explain  the  unearthly  scenery  and  metrical 
excitements  of  Thalaba.     He  had  an  ever  recurring  fight  with 
"hay-fever,"  and  other  indications  of  nervous  weakness.     Yet 
in  his  incessant  toil  and  cheerful  family-life,  set  in  the  midst 
of  scenery  so  exquisite,  he  found  such  happiness  as  his  nature 
could  feel.     At  fifty-one  he  could  say,  "my  literary  employ- 
ments have  never,  in  the  slightest  degree,  injured  my  health." 
He   denied   that   he  had    ever  been  a  close   student,  in   any 
unwholesome  sense  of  the  words.     There  was  nothing  irksome 
or  anxious  in  his  work,  carried  on  as  it  was  so  far  from  the 
central  machinery ;  he  was  master,  he  said,  of  his  time  and  of  i 
himself.     If  the  daily  walk  was  ever  intermitted  it  was  not  from  j 
indisposition  for  exercise,  and  it  was  very  seldom.     He  loved 
it ;  and  in  winter  would  often  take  it  with  some  of  his  young 
folks  before  breakfast,  "  for  the  sake  of  getting  the  first  sunshine;  i 
on  the  mountains."     His  mild   humour  found   an  outlet  in  a 
love  of  cats  and  kittens.     In  his  sixtieth  year  he  could  write 
to   a    contemporary :     "  Alas,    Grosvenor,   this    day   poor    oldi 
Rumpel  was  found  dead,  after  as  long  and  happy  a  life  as  catj 
could  wish  for,  if  cats  form  wishes  on  that  subject.     His  full 
titles  were  : — '  The  Most  Noble  the  Archduke  Rumpelstiltzchen 
Earl  Tomlemagne,  Baron  Raticide,  Waowhler,  and  Skaratch. 
There  should  be  a  court  mourning  in  Catland.  ...  As  we  have 
no  catacombs  here,  he  is  to  be  decently  interred  in  the  orchard 
and  cat-mint  planted  on  his  grave." 

Southey  -had  to  bear  the  anguish  of  losing  two  children 
a  son  and  daughter,  and  of  having  to  put  away  his  first  wife,  a: 
a  mental  invalid,  from  his  home.  Long  before  those  thing: 
happened,  he  felt  the  sombreness  of  advancing  life.  At  fort} 
he  was  talking  like  an  old  man,  about  the  sere  and  yellow  leal 
and  the  decline  of  his  poetic  powers.  Yet  we  cannot  avoid  th< 
conclusion  that  he  was  predominantly  happy.  "  When  I  ceasi, 
to  be  cheerful,"  he  said  of  himself  when  he  was  thirty -two,  "  i 
is  only  to  become  contemplative,  to  feel  at  times  a  wish  that 
was  in  that  state  of  existence  which  passes  not  away  ;  and  thi 
always  ends  in  a  new  impulse  to  proceed.'* 


ROBERT   SOUTHEY  107 

Those  who  think  about  Southey  at  all  seem  to  have  made 
up  their  minds  that  he  was  more  eminent  as  a  prose-writer 
than  as  a  poet.  Yet  this  judgment  apparently  rests  on  little 
besides  the  fact  that  his  excellent  lives  of  Nelson  and  Wesley  are 
well  written,  still  readable,  and  often  reprinted ;  while  his 
poetry,  except  one  or  two  ballads  and  lyrics,  is  hardly  known. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  the  great  bulk  of  Southey*s  prose 
— the  main  product  of  those  years  of  portentous  industry, — 
lies  in  a  darker  limbo  than  that  which  hides  his  verse.  It  falls 
into  three  classes,  with  each  of  which  time  has  dealt  unkindly. 
In  the  first  are  the  laborious  histories^  the  History  of  Brazil  and 
the  History  of  the  Peninsular  War^  which  are  entirely  forgotten. 
The  History  of  Portugal^  which  was  to  be  exhaustive  and 
epoch-making,  was  never  finished.  In  the  second  class  are  the 
innumerable  contributions  to  the  Quarterly  Revieiv  and  other 
periodicals  ;  reviews  literary,  political,  ecclesiastical,  economic ; 
articles  of  admirable  learning,  excellent  judgment,  faultless 
morals,  and  unbending  conservatism,  which  have  no  message 
for  posterity.  Into  the  third  class  fall  Southey *s  chief  efforts  at 
imaginative  and  humorous  prose,  the  Colloqtiies  on  Societyy  and 
that  interminable  farrago^  The  Doctor.  The  former,  one  may 
predict,  will  be  remembered  as  long  as  Macaulay's  essays  are 
read,  and  no  longer.  The  Doctor  is  dead  for  want  of  humour, 
where  humour  alone  could  preserve  life. 

After  all,  then,  it  would  seem  that  it  is  by  his  poetry  that 
Southey  must  live  if  he  is  to  live  at  all.  There  is,  sometimes, 
a  possible  resurrection  for  poetry,  when  there  is  none  for 
prose.     Can  Southey's  rise  again  } 

That  the  chief  part  of  it — those  poems  to  the  making  of  which 
there  went  so  much  pathetic  devotion,  so  much  genuine  inspira- 
tion,— has  the  look  of  death,  there  is  no  doubt.  And  no  wonder ! 
For,  in  the  first  place,  they  are  narrative  poems,  and  very  long  ; 
and  for  such  poetry  the  chance  of  immortality  is  very  precarious. 
If  narrative  poetry  attains  to  epic  rank,  if  it  is  poetry  like  the 
j^neid^  Paradise  Lost^  even  The  Faerie  Qiieene^  its  immortality 
will  depend  on  its  workmanship  :  the  dignity,  the  interest,  of  its 
themes,  is  not  likely  ever  to  suffer  loss.  But  where  epic  rank  is 
wanting,  where  the  narrative  lacks  the  religious  or  historico- 
traditional  basis  of  true  epic,  where  it  depends  for  its  interest 
on  purely  human  incident  and  character,  varied,  perhaps,  by 


108  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

some  preternatural  by-play,  or  recommended  by  great  novelty 
of  subject,  the  chance  of  life  is  much  more  doubtful.  And  the 
doubt  increases  with  the  length  of  the  poem.  Length  is  in 
itself  a  drawback,  a  stumbling-block,  even  to  the  keen  lover  of 
poetry,  much  more  to  the  average  reader  of  it.  And  this  for  a 
profound  reason.  Poetry  cannot  be  enjoyed  as  it  ought  to  be 
enjoyed,  any  more  than  it  can  be  made,  without  excitement ; 
and  excitement,  if  it  is  to  be  pleasurable  and  beneficial,  must 
not  be  unduly  protracted.  It  is  the  difficulty  in  narrative 
poetry  of  maintaining  emotion  at  the  pitch  necessary  for  poetic 
success,  whether  for  the  poet  or  his  reader,  which  explains  the 
small  proportion  of  extended  narrative  poetry  to  be  found 
among  classics  that  are  loved.  The  lyric  with  its  inevitableness, 
its  brevity  ;  the  drama,  with  its  intensity  and  its  conventional 
limitations,  are  the  more  natural  vehicles  of  inspiration,  the 
surer  messengers  between  heart  and  heart. 

True,  narrative  poetry  never  had  a  better  opportunity  than 
in  the  days  of  the  Romantic  Revival,  and  especially  before 
1 8 14,  when  the  Waverley  Novels  began  to  be  poured  forth. 
The  imaginative  sympathies  of  the  public  were  astir,  and  there 
was  as  yet  no  wealth  of  prose  fiction  to  gratify  them.  The 
taste  for  didactic  and  argumentative  poetry  had  died  away. 
There  was  an  opening  for  narrative  poetry,  for  fiction  in  verse  ; 
and  poetry  of  that  kind,  admirable  and  dazzlingly  popular 
poetry,  was  produced  abundantly.  The  popularity  of  Scott's 
poetry  in  this  kind  was  only  eclipsed  by  the  popularity  of 
Byron's.  Readers  who  would  now  spend  hours  over  novels, 
spent  hours  over  Marmion^  Lara,  and  The  Bride  of  Abydos, 

Neither  Scott  nor  Byron  is  dead ;  but  Byron's  purely 
narrative  poetry  has  but  a  faint  pulse  ;  and  Scott,  as  a  poet,  is 
far  from  being  to  us  what  he  was  to  our  forefathers.  Still,  The 
Lady  of  the  Lake  and  Marmion  will  always,  we  may  believe, 
find  delighted  readers,  because  of  Scott's  admirable  mastery  of 
the  metres  he  used,  and  because  of  the  deep  roots  struck  by 
those  poems  into  national  scenery  and  life.  They  are  not  far 
from  the  epic  place. 

Southey  had  definite  aims  in  poetry,  and  he  aimed  with 
intelligence  and  skill.  He  made  his  plans  in  his  revolutionary 
boyhood,  in  entire  freedom  from  "  classical "  tradition.  Romantic 
medisevalism  laid  hold  of  him  ;  his  most  juvenile  ambition  was 


ROBERT   SOUTHEY  109 

to  complete  the  Faerie  Qiieene.  His  lyrical  and  idyllic  and 
balladist's  efforts  were  episodic  and  occasional  ;  he  meant  to  be 
an  epic  poet,  and  he  succeeded  in  being  at  least  a  narrative  one. 
For  him  poetry  was  to  be  no  recreation  from  the  labours  of 
learning,  no  water  of  Lethe  in  which  the  student  might  forget 
himself  On  the  contrary,  it  was  to  be  one  aspect  of  the  most 
recondite  learning  ;  he  was  to  make  a  series  of  epics  on  the  great 
mythologies  of  the  world.  Such  was  the  ideal :  the  realization 
is  in  Thalaba  and  The  Curse  of  Kehama,  Southey  modestly 
repudiated  all  comparison  with  Milton  ;  but  he  quite  soberly 
ranked  himself  with  Tasso,  with  Virgil,  with  Homer.  Yet, 
with  such  grandiose  conceptions  and  ambitious  self-judgment, 
he  had  a  keen  sense,  born  of  the  new  criticism,  of  the  in- 
admissibility, in  the  best  poetry,  of  grandiosity  in  expression  ; 
of  pompous  diction,  rhetoric,  elaborate  ornamentation.  The 
heroic  in  poetry  meant,  in  Southey's  estimation,  no  abnegation 
of  spontaneity,  simplicity,  and  passion.  "  That  poetry,"  he  said 
once  (and  he  was  speaking  of  heroic  narrative),  "  which  would 
reach  the  heart,  must  go  straight  to  the  mark  like  an  arrow. 
Away  with  all  trickery  and  ornaments  when  pure  beauty  is  to 
be  represented  .  .  .  away  with  drapery  when  you  would  display 
muscular  strength."  "  I  am  a  Puritan  in  language,"  he  asserted 
when  he  was  writing  Madoc.  He  would  not  luxuriate  in 
archaisms ;  learned  as  he  was,  he  kept  the  impulse  to  neologize, 
sternly  in  check.  Yet  he  had  the  true  romantic  belief  in  novelty 
.as  essential  to  poetic  success. 

'  Southey's  method  of  attaining  novelty  was  twofold  :  by 
strangeness  of  theme  on  the  one  hand,  and  careful  metrical 
skill  on  the  other.  Only  in  Thalaba  and  Kehama,  where  the 
twofold  method  is  fully  employed,  does  Southey  realize  himself 
as  a  poet.  His  long  blank  verse  poems,  Madoc,  Roderick^  and 
others,  were  much  admired  by  his  contemporaries  ;  they  are 
still  readable  when  the  reader  has  a  great  deal  of  leisure,  and 
has  nothing  else  to  read.  But  the  curse  of  mere  narrative 
poetry  is  on  them,  and  they  are  too  undistinguished  to  be 
everlasting.  It  is  by  the  combination,  in  Thalaba  and  Kehainay 
•  of  sheer  cutlandishness  of  theme  with  lucid  refined  expression 
and  fascinating  metrical  movement,  that  Southey  lives  and 
deserves  to  live.  Both  parts  of  the  combination  are  essential. 
'  Without  the  distinction  of  style  the  strangeness  of  theme  would 


110  AVORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

have  been  a  fatal  stumbling-block ;  to  popularity  it  was  a 
hindrance  even  as  it  was.  Readers  could  stand  the  picturesque 
orientalism  of  Byron  and  Moore,  but  the  learned  orientalism  of 
Southey  was  too  strong  for  them.  Charles  Lamb  gave  voice 
to  a  great  deal  of  contemporary  criticism  when  he  wrote  as  he 
did  of  Kehaina,  "  My  imagination  goes  sinking  and  floundering 
in  the  vast  spaces  of  unopened-before  systems  and  faiths ;  I  am 
put  out  of  the  pale  of  my  old  sympathies  ;  my  moral  sense  is 
almost  outraged  ....  Jove,  and  his  brotherhood  of  gods, 
tottering  with  the  giant  assailings,  I  can  bear,  for  the  soul's 
hopes  are  not  struck  at  in  such  contests  ;  but  your  Oriental 
almighties  are  too  much  types  of  the  intangible  prototype  to  be 
meddled  with  without  shuddering."  Yet  what  attractiveness 
there  is  in  the  scenery,  and  in  the  beings,  human  and  preter- 
human, that  flit  across  it !  How  in  Thalaba  we  are  soothed  by 
the  vast  desert  solitudes ;  how  in  Kehaina  we  breathe  the 
heavy  sweet  air  of  Hindostan  ! 

But  it  is  true  that  we  could  not  stand  much  of  either  if  we 
were  not  detained  by  the  style.     As  to  style  in  general,  whether^ 
in    prose   or  verse,  Southey   held    what   is   the   best   practical; 
conviction  about  it,  namely,  that  one  ought  to  express  one's  selij 
as  perspicuously,  concisely,  and  impressively  as   possible,  and! 
otherwise  think  about  the  matter  not  at  all.     But  about  metre*' 
he  thought  very  much,  and  in  Thalaba  and  Kehama  he  attained 
to  a  diction  which  poets  seldom  achieve  without  much  artistic 
self- consciousness.      The    rhymelessness   of    Thalaba  (whicLi 
Southey   borrowed  from   the   Norwich   poet,  Sayers),  and  itf 
rhythmical  originality  are  potent  to  overcome  the  drawbacks  oji 
its  length  and  the  abstruseness  of  its  theme,  to  make  it  th( 
interesting  reading  which  it  undoubtedly  is.     For  the  emphasi 
of  rhyme  Southey  substitutes  another  emphasis,  that   of  thi 
repetition  of  phrase  which  every  reader  of  Thalaba  knows  S( 
well — 

"  Who  at  this  untimely  hour 
Vv^anders  o'er  the  desert  sands  ? 

No  station  is  in  view, 
Nor  palm-grove,  islanded  amid  the  waste. 

The  mother  and  her  child. 
The  widow'd  mother  and  the  fatherless  boy, 

They  at  this  untimely  hour 
Wander  o'er  the  desert  sands^ 


\a 


ROBERT  SOUTHEY  111 

The  delicacy  and  careful  simplicity  of  Southey's  diction  is 
very  unlike  the  rhetorical  tumidity  of  most  second-rate  poets — 

"  But  then  the  wrinkling  smile 
Forsook  Mohareb's  cheek, 
And  darker  feelings  settled  on  his  brow. 
*  Now  by  my  soul,'  quoth  he,  '  and  I  believe. 

Idiot !  that  I  have  led 
Some  camel-knee'd  prayer-monger  through  the  cave  ! 
What  brings  thee  hither  ?    Thou  shouldst  have  a  hut 
By  some  Saint's  grave  beside  the  public  way, 
There  to  less-knowing  fools 
Retail  thy  Koran-scraps, 
And  in  thy  turn  die  civet-like  at  last, 
In  the  dung-perfume  of  thy  sanctity  ! ' " 

Tennyson  might  have  written  the  last  four  lines. 

The  rapid  narrative  movement,  the  enchanting  clearness  of 
detail  which  we  feel  in  The  Ancient  Mariner ^  are  not  wanting 
here — 

"All  waste  !  no  sign  of  life 
But  the  track  of  the  wolf  and  the  bear  ! 

No  sound  but  the  wild,  wild  wind. 
And  the  snow  crunching  under  his  feet ! 
Night  is  come ;  neither  moon  nor  stars, 

Only  the  light  of  the  snow  ! 
But  behold  a  fire  in  the  cave  of  the  hill, 

A  heart-reviving  fire  ; 
And  thither  with  strength  renew'd 

Thalaba  presses  on. 

He  found  a  Woman  in  the  cave, 

A  solitary  Woman, 
Who  by  the  fire  was  spinning. 

And  singing  as  she  spun. 
The  pine  boughs  were  cheerfully  blazing. 
And  her  face  was  bright  with  the  flame  ; 
Her  face  was  as  a  Damsel's  face, 

And  yet  her  hair  was  grey. 
She  bade  him  welcome  with  a  smile, 

And  still  continued  spinning, 
And  singing  as  she  spun. 


The  thread  she  spun  it  gleam'd  like  gold 
In  the  light  of  the  odorous  fire. 
Yet  was  it  so  wondrously  thin, 
That,  save  when  it  shone  in  the  light, 
You  might  look  for  it  closely  in  vain. 


112  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

The  youth  sate  watching  it, 
And  she  observed  his  wonder, 

And  then  again  she  spake, 

And  still  her  speech  was  song  ; 
Now  twine  it  round  thy  hands  I  say, 
Now  twine  it  round  thy  hands  I  pray  ! 
My  thread  is  small,  my  thread  is  fine. 
But  he  must  be 
A  stronger  than  thee  P 

Who  can  break  this  thread  of  mine  !  " 


Nor,  in  the  phantasmagoria  of  the  preternatural,  is  the 
natural  thrill  never  felt.  Even  the  magic  **  Green  Bird  of 
Paradise  "  falls  short  of  the  magic  that  is  abroad  in  an  English 
spring — 

"  Her  voice  was  soft  and  sweet, 
It  rose  not  with  the  blackbird's  thrill, 
Nor  warbled  like  that  dearest  bird  that  holds 

The  solitary  man 
A  loiterer  in  his  thoughtful  walk  at  eve." 

Nothing,  certainly,  but  clarity  of  style  and  metrical  resource 
could  make  the  reader  feel  at  home  among  the  outlandish  com 
plications  of  Kehama.  And  yet  those  gifts  are  so  conspicuous 
and  the  narrative  is  made  so  beguiling  by  its  constant  breaks 
that  the  reader  who  begins  the  poem  fairly  will  hardly  wish  to 
stop  before  he  has  finished  it.  If  the  human  interest  is  slight 
the  adventures  are  most  winningly  described — 

"  Behold  them  wandering  on  their  hopeless  way, 

Unknowing  where  they  stray, 
Yet  sure  where'er  they  stop  to  find  no  rest. 

The  evening  gale  is  blowing, 

It  plays  among  the  trees  ; 
Like  plumes  upon  a  warrior's  crest, 
They  see  yon  cocos  tossing  to  the  breeze. 
Ladurlad  views  them  with  impatient  mind, 

Impatiently  he  hears 

The  gale  of  evening  blowing. 
The  sound  of  waters  flowing, 
As  if  all  sights  and  sounds  combined 

To  mock  his  irremediable  woe  ; 
For  not  for  him  the  blessed  waters  flow, 
For  not  for  him  the  gales  of  evening  blow, 

A  fire  is  in  his  heart  and  brain, 
And  Nature  hath  no  healing  for  his  pain." 


ROBERT   SOUTHEY  113 

Wordsworth  hit  on  a  good  criticism  of  Southey  when  he 
complained  of  his  lack  of  ideality.  In  composing  a  poem, 
Wordsworth  said,  Southey  was  content  with  choosing  a  subject, 
and  then  reading  up  about  it  carefully  :  he  did  not,  as  the 
great  poet  must,  conceive  and  passionately  hold  fast  a  central 
idea  of  which  the  poem  is  the  exposition.  Hence  he  failed  "to 
give  anything  which  impresses  the  mind  strongly,  and  is  recol- 
lected in  solitude." 

This  is  true,  and  it  is  final.  Southey's  best  poetry  is  tho- 
roughly good^  nay,  in  a  sense  it  is  first-rate,  the  cunning  admir- 
able work  of  a  thoroughly  competent  craftsman ;  and,  as  such, 
it  ought  never  to  be  deposed  from  the  high  place  which  by  right 
it  holds  in  English  literature.  But  it  is  poetry  of  erudition  and 
skill,  not  poetry  of  passion  or  prophecy.  It  is  the  work  of  one 
neither  intoxicated  with  the  beauty  of  things,  nor  testifying  of 
those  supreme  realities  in  which  the  beautiful  and  the  true  are 
indistinguishable.  And  therefore  all  the  labour  has  an  in- 
adequate result.  Southey  gave  nothing  "which  impresses  the 
mind  strongly,  and  is  recollected  in  solitude." 

The  two  principal  achievements  of  Southey  as  Laureate,  the 
Carmen  Niiptiale  on  the  marriage  of  Princess  Charlotte,  and  the 
unlucky  Vision  of  Jndgment  on  the  death  of  George  III.,  add 
nothing  to  his  best  reputation.  Yet  the  scorn  which  they  pro- 
voked at  the  time  was  political  rather  than  literary.  Hazlitt 
brought  down  a  quite  disproportionately  heavy  mass  of  dis- 
approbation on  the  Carmen  Nnptiale,  not  because  the  poem  was 
bad,  but  because  Southey,  the  renegade  republican,  was  now  a 
court  official.  The  same  feeling,  mixed  with  personal  jealousy 
and  resentment,  inspired  Byron's  reply  to  The  Vision  of  Judg- 
ment. The  Vision  is,  as  poetry,  as  bad  as  Southey's  worst 
enemy  could  have  desired  :  it  is  an  attempt,  in  bad  hexameters, 
at  the  Dantesque  sublime,  which,  for  sheer  lack  of  humour  and 
impotence  of  imagination,  bears  off  the  palm,  even  among  such 
pieces  de  circonstance,  Byron  might  have  spared  himself  the 
trouble  of  writing  his  cowntQV- Vision,  which,  as  poetry,  is  not 
much  better  than  Southey's,  and  is,  in  effect,  hardly  more 
blasphemous.  But  in  the  preface  to  his  Vision,  Southey  had 
attacked  Byron,  without  naming  him,  as  the  founder  of  a 
"  Satanic  school  '*  of  poetry  (he  was  thinking  of  Beppo  and  the 
early  part  of  Don  Jttan) ;  and  it  was  in  self-defence,  as  much  as 


114  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

in  virtuous  condemnation  of  George  III.,  that  Byron  lashed  out 
with  his  sting. 

Some  strong  literary  friendships  added  to  the  happiness  of 
Southey's  life.  The  friendship  with  Coleridge  was  spoiled  by 
the  family  complications.  That  with  Charles  Lamb  tended 
towards  a  kind  of  death  by  slow  petrifaction.  De  Quincey 
Southey  came  to  dislike  actively  as  time  went  on.  His  intel- 
lectual sympathies  were  with  a  different  type  among  his  con- 
temporaries, and  especially  with  Walter  Savage  Landor  and 
Sir  Henry  Taylor. 

To  Wordsworth  Southey  was  splendidly  and  consistently 
loyal.  For  constant  intercourse  they  were  rather  inconveniently 
situated :  they  were  too  near  to  correspond  by  letter,  and  too 
far  apart,  and  Southey  was  too  busy,  for  even  such  excellent 
pedestrians  to  meet  constantly.  There  seems  never  to  have 
been  any  cloud  between  the  two  men.  There  were,  no  doubt, 
certain  influences  which  made  for  estrangement.  As  long  as 
Coleridge  was  in  the  Lake  country  at  all,  he  hung  upon  the 
Wordsworths,  and  Southey,  at  Greta  Hall,  was  identified  with 
the  opposite  camp,  that  composed  of  Mrs.  Coleridge  and  the 
children.  Against  increasing  warmth  of  friendship  there 
worked  temperament :  Wordsworth  and  Southey  agreed  in 
politics  and  in  devotion  to  literature  ;  but  both  were  exceedingly 
reserved,  and  neither  had  enough  humour  to  overcome  the 
reserve ;  with  each  the  envelope  of  self-contained  domesticity 
had  a  shell-like  hardness.  Wordsworth  cared  passionately  for 
none  of  his  friends ;  and  Southey  was  not  a  man  for  whom 
anybody  could  care  passionately.  Intellectually,  Wordsworth 
regarded  him  with  cold  approbation ;  he  approved  this  and 
that  in  his  poems,  but  found  them  all  wanting  in  the  essentials. 
Still,  the  relations  bore  well  the  strain  of  time.  Forty  years 
the  poets  were  neighbours  ;  and  "  loving  friends "  they  may 
without  much  straining  of  words  be  said  to  have  been.  "In  ^_ 
every  relation  of  life,  and  every  point  of  view,  Wordsworth  is 
a  truly  exemplary  and  admirable  man."  So  Southey  wrote  of  »;c. 
him  after  twenty  years'  proximity.  Sometimes  they  would  i  5 
exchange  visits  of  a  few  days.  Sometimes  the  Greta  Hall 
and  Rydal  folks  would  have  long  summer  outings  together  and 
picnic  here  and  there.  One  great  expedition  signalized  H^  -. 
Waterloo  year.     A  bonfire  was  to  be  lit  on  Skiddaw,  and  onB^v 


ROBERT  SOUTHEY  115 

August  21,  the  Southeys,  Wordsworths  (the  poet  and  his  wife, 
Dorothy  and  the  boy  John),  with  other  friends  (among  whom  was 
a  son  of  Johnson's  Boswell),  climbed  the  mountain  to  make  the 
celebration.  They  set  out  about  four  in  the  afternoon  ;  roasted 
beef  and  boiled  plum-pudding  on  the  summit ;  sang  "  God 
save  the  King"  round  flaming  tar-barrels;  fired  cannon;  and 
rolled  blazing  balls  of  tow  and  turpentine  down  the  sides  of  the 
hill.  Never,  surely,  was  timeless  Skiddaw  disturbed  by  such  a 
tumult  of  the  children  of  time !  The  only  mishap  was  of 
Wordsworth's  making.  When  boiling-water  was  wanted  for 
punch  it  was  found  that  somebody  "  with  a  red  cloak  on "  had 
overturned  the  kettle.  The  red  cloak  was  brought  home  to 
Wordsworth ;  he  had  thrown  one  of  Mrs.  Southey's  round  his 
shoulders.  "  He  thought  to  slink  off  undiscovered,"  wrote 
Southey ;  "  but  I  punished  him  by  singing  a  parody  which  they 
all  joined  in  !  *  'Twas  yo2c  that  kicked  the  kettle  down !  'twas 
you.  Sir,  you  ! '  "  The  water-drinking  poet  had  done  more  harm 
than  he  realized.  Some  of  the  party  had  to  take  their  rum 
stronger  than  otherwise  they  would  have  done  (how  far  we 
have  travelled  in  less  than  a  hundred  years !)  ;  and  the  descent 
of  Skiddaw  was  made  towards  midnight  in  a  rather  scandalous 
manner. 

None  of  Wordsworth's  contemporary  critics  was  quite  as 
deliberately  and  steadily  admiring  as  Southey.  The  most  solid 
and  solemn  expression  of  his  judgment  was  given  in  1829. 
It  is  important  as  containing  the  maximum  of  his  dispraise. 
"A  greater  poet  than  Wordsworth  there  never  has  been,  nor 
ever  will  be.  I  could  point  out  some  of  his  pieces  which  seem 
to  me  good  for  nothing,  and  not  a  few  faulty  passages,  but 
I  know  of  no  poet  in  any  language  who  has  written  so  much 
that  is  good."  In  18 14  (the  year  when  The  Exacrsion  appeared) 
he  had  written :  "  I  speak  not  from  the  partiality  of  friend- 
ship, nor  because  we  have  been  so  absurdly  held  up  as  both 
writing  upon  one  concerted  system  of  poetry,  but  with  the 
most  deUberate  exercise  of  impartial  judgment  whereof  I 
am  capable,  when  I  declare  my  full  conviction  that  posterity 
will  rank  him  with  Milton." 

Southey's  sun  declined  and  set  in  a  murky  west.  His 
first  wife,  the  mother  of  his  children,  had  to  be  taken  from 
her  home  in  1834,  and  in  1837  she  died  without  having  recovered 


116  WORDSWORTH  AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

her  mental  health.  A  week  or  two  before  the  end  Southey 
wrote :  "  The  worst  has  long  been  past,  and  when  our  sharp 
grief  is  over,  we  shall  be  thankful  for  her  deliverance  from  the 
body  of  this  death." 

To  a  man  of  sixty-four  widowerhood  may  be  an  intolerable 
burden.  Southey  was  to  survive  his  wife  not  much  more  than 
five  years,  and  they  were  not  happy  years.  He  went  on  with 
his  work ;  he  saw  friends ;  he  travelled  ;  but  it  was  evident 
that  he  was  broken  irrecoverably.  It  was  no  sign  to  the 
contrary  that  in  this  condition  he  suddenly  married  again.  At 
Lymington  in  Hampshire  there  lived  a  minor  poetess  called 
Caroline  Bowles,  in  whose  works  Southey  had  long  taken  an 
interest,  and  with  whom  he  had  often  corresponded.  She  was 
twelve  years  his  junior.  On  his  way  back  from  the  Continent 
he  visited  her  at  Lymington,  and  in  1839  they  were  married. 
It  was  a  pity ;  but  there  is  no  power  to  prevent  such  unseemly 
things.  The  marriage  did  not  even  arrest  Southey's  decline ; 
the  fire  and  strength  had  gone  from  his  face ;  he  was  languid  and 
torpid.  Power  of  work,  power  of  memory  ebbed  away.  At 
last  he  could  only  look  at  his  books  with  the  old  hunger,  kiss 
them  with  the  old  passion. 

Even  in  1840,  three  years  before  his  death,  he  did  not  at 
first  recognize  Wordsworth  when  he  went  once  to  see  him. 
"  Then  his  eyes  flashed  for  a  moment  with  their  former  bright- 
ness, but  he  sank  into  the  state  in  which  I  had  found  him, 
patting  with  both  hands  his  books  affectionately  like  a  child." 
Further  and  further  into  the  shadow  he  passed  ;  until,  in  March, 
1843,  what  had  long  been  oblivion  deepened  into  death. 

"All  in  the  wild  March  morning,"  Wordsworth  and 
Quillinan,  his  son-in-law,  came  to  the  funeral.  The  grave  is 
conspicuous  in  Crosthwaite  churchyard ;  and  in  the  church 
there  is  a  recumbent  figure  inscribed  with  Wordworth's  lines. 
They  are  true  to  the  man  they  commemorate. 

"  Ye  vales  and  hills,  whose  beauty  hither  drew 
The  poet's  steps,  and  fixed  him  here  ;  on  you 
His  eyes  have  closed  ;  and  ye  loved  books,  no  more 
Shall  Southey  feed  upon  your  precious  lore. 
To  works  that  ne'er  shall  forfeit  their  renown 
Adding  immortal  labours  of  his  own, — ; 
Whether  he  traced  historic  truth  with  zeal 
For  the  state's  guidance  or  the  church's  weal. 


I 


ROBERT  SOUTHEY  117 

Or  fancy  disciplined  by  curious  art 
Informed  his  pen,  or  wisdom  of  the  heart, 
Or  judgments  sanctioned  in  the  patriot's  mind 
By  reverence  for  the  rights  of  all  mankind. 
Wide  were  his  aims,  yet  in  no  human  breast 
Could  private  feelings  meet  in  holier  rest. 
His  joys — his  griefs — have  vanished  like  a  cloud 
From  Skiddaw's  top  ;  but  he  to  Heaven  was  vowed 
Through  a  life  long  and  pure,  and  steadfast  faith 
Calm'd  in  his  soul  the  fear  of  change  and  death." 

It  was  Wordsworth  who  remarked   on   the  accurate   self- 
portraiture  of  Southey's  well-known  lyric,  written  in  1818 — 

"  My  days  among  the  Dead  are  past ; 

Around  me  I  behold, 
Where'er  these  casual  eyes  are  cast. 

The  mighty  minds  of  old  ; 
My  never-failing  friends  are  they. 
With  whom  I  converse  day  by  day. 

"  With  them  I  take  delight  in  weal 
And  seek  relief  in  woe  ; 
And  while  I  understand  and  feel 

How  much  to  them  I  owe, 
My  cheeks  have  often  been  bedew'd 
With  tears  of  thoughtful  gratitude. 

"  My  thoughts  are  with  the  Dead,  with  them 
I  live  in  long-past  years. 
Their  virtues  love,  their  faults  condemn, 

Partake  their  hopes  and  fears. 
And  from  their  lessons  seek  and  find 
Instruction  with  an  humble  niind. 

'  My  hopes  are  with  the  Dead,  anon 
My  place  with  them  will  be, 
And  I  with  them  will  travel  on 

Through  all  Futurity  ; 
Yet  leaving  here  a  name,  I  trust, 

That  will  not  perish  in  the  dust." 


CHAPTER    VI 
GRASMERE 

WORDSWORTH'S  winter  in  Germany  in  1798-9  left  no 
permanent  mark  on  his  life.  Had  Wordsworth  been  a 
rather  different  man,  the  result  might  have  been  very  different. 
To  a  poet  of  his  temperament  and  at  his  age,  nothing  more 
stimulating  might  have  happened  than  a  visit  to  the  Germany 
of  those  days.  For  Wordsworth  was  an  innovator,  a  literary 
reformer,  a  Romanticist ;  and  the  land  in  which  he  sojourned 
was  in  the  blaze  of  its  Aufkldrtmg,  in  the  stir  of  a  Romantic 
movement  more  many-sided  than  that  in  Britain,  and,  in  its 
results,  perhaps,  even  more  solidly  constructive.  When  Words- 
worth and  his  sister,  with  Coleridge,  landed  at  Hamburg  in 
September,  1798,  German  literature  was  ending  its  first  modern 
half-century  of  genuine  native  vigour,  and  several  imperishable 
monuments  of  its  thought  were  already  there,  plain  to  see. 
Among  them,  Lessing  the  critic,  and  Klopstock  and  Wieland 
the  poets,  had  broken  the  spell  of  French  influence,  and  had 
claimed  a  large  place  in  the  world  for  the  inborn  Teutonic  l'^-- 
spirit ;  and,  though  the  poets  were  to  survive  as  little  more  than  ^~:: 
names,  Lessing  was  to  live  as  one  of  the  greatest  of  modern 
critics.  For  more  than  thirty  years  The  Soi-rows  of  Wej'ther 
and  Gotz  von  Berlichingen,  pure  types  respectively  of  sentimental 
and  picturesque  Romanticism,  had  been  before  the  world. 
They  were  the  work  of  Goethe  ;  and,  by  1798,  Goethe  had  done 
much  of  his  greater  work,  beside  which  Gdtz  and  Werther  have 
a  merely  curious  and  historic  interest — work  like  the  lyrics,  the 
first  part  oi  Faust,  and  Wilhelm  Meister — which  far  transcends 'ijiit: 
any  petty  antithesis  of  "classical"  and  "romantic."  And  Ger- '  3  t> 
man  philosophy  was  well  in  line  with  German  literature.  For 
in  that  same  year,  1798,  German  thought  had  been  powerfully 

118 


be:: 


la.-::, 
iiev; 


a:i: 

re::: 


'j:- 


\:r. 


I 


GRASMERE  119 

influenced  for  seventeen  years  by  the  mature  philosophy  of 
Immanuel  Kant.  In  all  respects  the  intellectual  fascination  of 
Germany  was  strong  and  might  have  been  overpowering. 
There  was,  no  doubt,  another  side  to  the  picture.  The  want 
of  political  unity  in  Germany  was  reflected  in  German  intel- 
lectual life  ;  as  patriotism  was  local  rather  than  national,  much 
of  literature  was  a  thing  of  coteries  and  cliques,  and  its 
national  import  might  easily  miss  being  realized.  Yet  there 
was  enough,  both  in  prose  and  verse,  one  would  have  thought, 
to  arrest  a  mind  Hke  Wordsworth's,  and  give  it  a  powerful 
bent. 

And  was  not  Coleridge  his  companion,  Coleridge  the  critic 
on  a  level  with  Lessing,  Coleridge  the  close  student  of  con- 
temporary philosophy,  who  well  knew  Kant  and  his  importance, 
and  was  to  be  identified  more  nearly  than  with  anything  else, 
with  the  triumphs  and  mysteries  of  German  idealism  ?  The 
companionship,  we  must  notice,  soon  broke  down.  The  poets 
parted  at  Hamburg,  Coleridge  going  to  Ratzeburg,  from  which 
he  afterwards  migrated  to  Gottingen  ;  and  the  Wordsworths 
taking  up  their  quarters  at  Goslar,  south  of  Brunswick,  near  the 
Harz  mountains.  Coleridge  took  his  German  visit  seriously ; 
he  worked  hard  at  the  language  ;  matriculated  at  the  University 
of  Gottingen,  and  collected  materials  for  a  life  of  Lessing.  The 
Wordsworths'  sojourn,  on  the  other  hand,  was  very  nearly  a 
failure.  Goslar  was  as  dull  as  ditchwater  ;  the  climate  was  cold, 
and  it  was  the  hardest  winter  of  the  century ;  the  Wordsworths 
were  not  good  at  making  friends  ;  Wordsworth  detested  tobacco ; 
from  the  social  point  of  view  in  Germany,  Dorothy  was  an 
encumbrance  to  her  brother.  They  made  small  progress  in 
Germany,  and  the  months  flowed  on  drearily.  Before  parting 
from  Coleridge  they  met  Klopstock's  brother  at  Hamburg,  and 
saw  Klopstock  himself,  from  whom  they  got  a  very  garbled 
account  of  the  state  of  German  literature.  Wieland  was  repre- 
sented as  more  important  than  Goethe.  Kant,  Klopstock  found 
"  utterly  incomprehensible  "  ;  "  Kant,"  Wordsworth  represented 
him  as  saying,  "  had  appeared  ambitious  to  be  the  founder  of 
a  sect ;  he  had  succeeded  ;  but  the  Germans  were  now  coming 
to  their  senses  again." 

This  kind  of  thing  fitted  in  with  Wordsworth's  prejudices. 
He  was  intensely  insular.     He  could  feel  the  beating  of  the 


120  WORDSWORTH  AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

universal  heart,  but  not  easily  through  books  ;  it  must  com- 
municate itself  to  him  through  the  mountains  and  the  groves, 
the  changing  clouds  and  frolicking  lambs  of  his  native  land. 
Goethe  was  too  non-moral  to  be  even  tolerable  lo  him ;  he 
hated  him  to  the  end  of  his  life.  Wordsworth  was  a  philosopher, 
indeed,  and  an  idealist ;  but  his  philosophy  was  his  own  :  he 
was  no  student,  and  would  never  have  had  patience  or  docility 
enough  to  enrich  his  thought  with  the  systematic  thought  of  the 
Germans,  expressed  in  their  difficult  tongue. 

And  so,  though  he  was  by  no  means  idle  at  Goslar,  his 
energy  was  the  energy  of  reminiscence.  He  neither  studied 
Kant  nor  read  Goethe ;  he  was  nearly  frozen  to  death  in  his 
bedroom  over  an  unceiled  passage  in  a  draper's  house ;  he  was 
not  fortunately  situated  with  respect  to  the  attainment  of  his 
main  object,  a  knowledge  of  the  language.  Nor  was  he  well : 
he  was  weakly,  and  suffered  from  pain  in  the  side.  While  he 
walked  in  the  freezing  days  in  the  ghost-haunted  imperial  town, 
his  spirit  wandered  still  in  lakeland  or  among  the  Alfoxden 
hollies,  and  the  serene  purpose  of  the  lonely  English  poet  lost 
no  whit  of  its  individuality.  It  may  be  too  much  to  say,  as 
Mr.  Myers  has  said,  that  "  the  four  months  spent  at  Goslar  were 
the  very  bloom  of  Wordsworth's  poetic  career ; "  but  it  is  not 
too  much  to  say  that  they  were  no  interruption  to  that  career, 
that,  on  the  contrary,  they  forwarded  it  by  a  kind  of  force  of 
antagonism.  He  composed  his  verses  by  Dorothy's  side,  or 
"  with  no  companion  but  a  kingfisher  "  glancing  by  him,  as  he 
walked  in  the  public  gardens.  In  his  exile,  he  felt  himself  like 
a  half-dead  fly  he  saw  crawling  back  to  life  in  the  warmth  of 
the  dreary  un-English  stove  as  he  toiled  over  his  German.  He 
hated  the  look  of  the  heraldic  Brunswick  horse  on  the  stove. 

"  A  plague  on  your  languages,  German  and  Norse  ! 
Let  me  have  the  song  of  the  kettle  ; 
And  the  tongs  and  the  poker,  instead  of  that  horse, 
That  gallops  away  with  such  fury  and  force 
On  this  dreary  dull  plate  of  black  metal. 

"  See  that  Fly, — a  disconsolate  creature  ! 
perhaps 
A  child  of  the  field  or  the  grove  ; 
And,  sorrow  for  him  !  the  dull  treacherous  heat 
Has  seduced  the  poor  fool  from  his  winter  retreat, 
And  he  creeps  to  the  edge  of  my  stove." 


GRASMERE  121 

Could  but  the  fly  be  saved  till  the  summer  ;  could  but  the 
oet  be  restored  to  the  places  he  loved  ! 
"  God  is  my  witness,  thou  small  helpless  thing  ! 
Thy  life  I  would  gladly  sustain 
Till  summer  come  up  from  the  south,  and  with  crowds 
Of  thy  brethren  a  march  thou  shouldst  sound  through  the  clouds, 
And  back  to  the  forests  again  !  " 

But  at  least  the  poet  could  dream  of  home  scenes  and 
Dlk.  It  was  at  Goslar  that  he  wrote  Nuttiitg,  that  record  of 
piritual  progress  at  Hawkshead  that  we  already  know.  Here, 
DO,  he  recalled  the  deathbed  of  Taylor,  the  Hawkshead  head- 
laster,  in  an  "  address  "  to  the  Hawkshead  scholars. 

"  I  kissed  his  cheek  before  he  died  ; 
And  when  his  breath  was  fled, 
I  raised,  while  kneeling  by  his  side, 
His  hand  : — it  dropped  like  lead. 
Your  hands,  dear  little  ones,  do  all 
That  can  be  done,  will  never  fall 
Like  his  till  they  are  dead." 

It  was  at  Goslar  that  he  wrote  Ltccy  Gray  and  Riith — Lucy 
7rayf  founded  on  an  incident  near  Halifax,  told  him  by 
Dorothy,  an  experiment  in  the  Wordsworthian  spiritualization 
)f  "  things  common  "  ;  Ruth,  a  ballad  of 

"  An  innocent  life,  yet  far  astray  !  " 
vhlch  grew  out  of  a  west  country  story. 

"  That  oaten  pipe  of  hers  is  mute. 
Or  thrown  away  ;  but  with  a  flute 
Her  loneliness  she  cheers  ; 
This  flute,  made  of  a  hemlock  stalk, 
At  evening  in  his  homeward  walk 
The  Ouantock  woodman  hears." 

To  Goslar,  too,  belong  the  L^icy  poems,  that  strange  little 
ovely  group,  which  breathe  a  passion  unfamiliar  to  Words- 
worth, and  about  which  he — so  ready  to  talk  about  the  genesis 
of  his  poems — has  told  us  nothing.  Was  it  pure  idealization  ? 
Why  not  ?  Or  was  it  idealization  started  by  some  fugitive 
fancy }  Or  was  there  something  deeper  at  the  base,  unspoken 
and  unspeakable  }  Does  it  matter  ?  Let  a  poet  keep  some  of 
his  secrets  :  we  need  not  grudge  him  the  privacy  when  the 
poetry  is  as  beautiful  as  this  ;  when  there  is  such  celebration  of 
girlhood,  love,  and  death.     Who  does  not  know,  who  can  too 


122  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 


often  hear  about,  the  girl  whom  Nature  trained  with  her  own 
hand  ?  In  the  strange  spaces  of  the  Harz  Forest,  Wordsworth 
saw  and  described  the  training. 

"  Three  years  she  grew  in  sun  and  shower 
Then  Nature  said,  '  A  lovelier  flower 
On  earth  was  never  sown  ; 
This  Child  I  to  myself  will  take  ; 
She  shall  be  mine,  and  I  will  make 
A  Lady  of  my  own. 

"  '  Myself  will  to  my  darling  be 

Both  law  and  impulse  :  and  with  me 

The  Girl,  in  rock  and  plain, 

In  earth  and  heaven,  in  glade  and  bower. 

Shall  feel  an  overseeing  power 

To  kindle  or  restrain. 
"  '  She  shall  be  sportive  as  the  fawn 

That  wild  with  glee  across  the  lawn 

Or  up  the  mountain  springs  ; 

And  hers  shall  be  the  breathing  balm, 

And  hers  the  silence  and  the  calm 

Of  mute  insensate  things. 

"  *  The  floating  clouds  their  state  shall  lend 
To  her  ;  for  her  the  willow  bend  ; 
Nor  shall  she  fail  to  see 
Even  in  the  motions  of  the  Storm 
Grace  that  shall  mould  the  Maiden's  form 
By  silent  sympathy. 

"'The  Stars  of  midnight  shall  be  dear 
To  her  ;  and  she  shall  lean  her  ear 
In  many  a  secret  place 
Where  rivulets  dance  their  wayward  round, 
And  beauty  born  of  murmuring  sound 
Shall  pass  into  her  face. 

** '  And  vital  feelings  of  delight 

Shall  rear  her  form  to  stately  height 
Her  virgin  bosom  swell  ; 
Such  thoughts  to  Lucy  I  will  give 
While  she  and  I  together  live 
Here  in  the  happy  dell.' 

"  Thus  Nature  spake — The  work  was  done — 
How  soon  my  Lucy's  race  was  run  ! 
She  died,  and  left  to  me 
This  heath,  this  calm,  and  quiet  scene  ; 
The  memory  of  what  has  been. 
And  never  more  will  be." 


Tbt 


Hf 


GRASMERE  123 

The  thought  of  Lucy  added  bitterness  to  the  separation 

•om  England. 

''  I  travelled  among  unknown  men, 
In  lands  beyond  the  sea  ; 
Nor,  England  !  did  I  know  till  then 
What  love  I  bore  to  thee." 

He  will  not  again  go  abroad,  for — 

"  She  I  cherished  turned  her  wheel 
Beside  an  English  fire." 

Who  and  what  was  she  ? 

"  She  dwelt  among  the  untrodden  ways 
Beside  the  springs  of  Dove  ; 
A  Maid  whom  there  were  none  to  praise, 
And  very  few  to  love  : 

"  A  violet  by  a  mossy  stone 
Half  hidden  from  the  eye  ! 
— Fair  as  a  star,  when  only  one 
Is  shining  in  the  sky." 

She  died — after  Nature's  blessed  work  was  done,  indeed  ; 
md  before  she  had  lost  her  girlhood. 

"  She  is  in  her  grave,  and,  oh, 
The  difference  to  me  !  " 

The  poet's  sense  of  loss  is  sublime  in  its  utter  simplicity. 
He  finds  harmony  rather  than  harshness  in  the  contrast  between 
;he  illusion  of  love  and  the  fact  of  death. 

"  A  slumber  did  my  spirit  seal ; 
I  had  no  human  fears  ; 
She  seemed  a  thing  that  could  not  feel 
The  touch  of  earthly  years. 

"  No  motion  has  she  now,  no  force  ; 
She  neither  hears  nor  sees  ; 
Rolled  round  in  earth's  diurnal  course 
With  rock,  and  stones,  and  trees." 

At  Goslar,  Wordsworth  wrote  the  spirited  apologia  for  poetry 
called  A  Poet's  Epitaph,  But  the  energy  of  reminiscence  and 
verse-making  brought  about  greater  results  than  any  of  these. 

The  idea  which  had  haunted  him  at  Alfoxden,  the  idea  of  a 
great  poem  on  the  relations  of  Man  and  Nature,  haunted  him 
still.     This  was  to  be  his  life-work,  his  epic,  his  product  which 


124  WORDSWORTH  AND   HIS   CIRCLE  ■ 

"  posterity  would  not  willingly  let  die."  At  Goslar,  as  we  have 
seen,  he  meditated  much  on  his  Hawkshead  schooldays  ;  and 
more  and  more  his  subject  presented  itself  to  him  in  an  auto- 
biographical shape.  No  better  introduction,  he  felt,  could  be 
found  for  a  poem  on  Man  and  the  World,  than  a  poem  on  the 
growth  of  his  own  mind,  a  poetic  record  of  the  process  by  which 
he  and  Nature  won  each  other — the  "spousal  verse"  of  that 
particular  "  consummation."  % 

Accordingly,  when  the  happy  moment  arrived  of  release 
from  imperial,  frosty,  dreary  Goslar,  as  he  drove  towards 
Gottingen  and  Coleridge,  Wordsworth  began  T/ie  Prelude.  He 
felt  like  a  bird  freed  from  a  cage.     "  O  there  is  blessing,"  he 

sang,  as  the  horses'  feet  carried  him  along — 

% 
"  O  there  is  blessing  in  this  gentle  breeze,  "' 

A  visitant  that  while  it  fans  my  cheek  ;>] 

Doth  seem  half-conscious  of  the  joy  it  brings."  '' 

To  the  breeze  without,  there  was  an  answering  stir  of  the 
poet's  spirit ;  within  as  without,  there  was  the  sense  of  the 
break-up  of  a  long  frost.  The  poet  was  free  once  more ;  free;;! 
to  settle  where  he  would,  to  do  what  he  would.  It  was  another 
crisis,  like  the  crisis  of  the  morning  after  the  ball.  And  it  was! 
met  in  the  same  spirit. 

"  To  the  open  fields  I  told 
A  prophecy  :  poetic  numbers  came 
Spontaneously  to  clothe  in  priestly  robe 
A  renovated  spirit  singled  out, 
Such  hope  was  mine,  for  holy  services." 

As  one  reads  on  in  T/ie  Prelude,  one  passes  without  a 
break — so  the  poet  idealized  the  facts — from  the  departure  from 
Goslar  to  the  settlement  at  Grasmere.  And,  indeed,  ever 
biography  has  little  to  say  about  the  intervening  months.  Aftei 
paying  a  good  long  visit  to  Coleridge  at  Gottingen,  William 
and  Dorothy  returned  to  England  in  the  spring  of  1799 
There  was  no  possibility  of  going  back  to  Alfoxden,  and  the> 
at  once  made  for  the  North,  going  to  stay  with  the  Hutchinsons 
at  Sockburn-on-Tees,  on  the  borders  of  Durham  and  Yorkshire! 
That  was  their  headquarters  through  the  summer  and  autumn. 
It  was  the  North,  the  land  of  mountain  and  flood  ;  but  it  wai 
not   the   Lake   Country.      Hardly   yet   had    Wordsworth,   th«!i 


, 


:p 


OF   THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


t. 


GRASMERE  125 

Dckermouth  child,  the  Hawkshead  schoolboy,  familiar  with 
sthwaite  and  Windermere,  penetrated  into  the  central  Paradise, 
je  was  to  do  so  now  ;  he  was  to  occupy  it,  to  take  possession 
it,  for  ever. 

In  September,  he  walked  over  into  Westmorland  with  his 
ilor  brother  John  and  Coleridge.  They  entered  the  Paradise 
)m  Ambleside.  As  we  think  of  them  let  us  join  ourselves  to 
eir  shades,  and  go  with  them,  as  they  advance  to  this  immortal 
nquest.  Two  of  our  companions,  we  know,  are  good  company, 
hat  of  John  Wordsworth,  the  sailor  ?  Alas  !  we  shall  hear 
uch  of  him  in  the  next  chapter.  Meanwhile,  take  a  beautiful 
ntence  about  him,  written  by  Coleridge  to  Dorothy.  "Your 
'Other  John  is  one  of  you  ;  a  man  who  hath  solitary  usings  of 
s  own  intellect,  deep  in  feeling,  with  a  subtle  tact,  a  swift 
stinct  of  truth  and  beauty." 

The  most  natural  road  by  which  to  leave  Ambleside  is  that 
hich  follows  at  some  distance  the  course  of  the  Rothay.  It  is 
•oad,  level,  and  shady  ;  rich  woods  fringe  the  lower  slopes  of 
oughrigg  on  the  left ;  sweet  meadows  lie  along  the  stream  ; 
e  park-land  of  Rydal  Hall,  with  noble  trees  and  verdant 
eads,  is  on  the  right.    But  the  magnet  which  draws  the  traveller 

the  mountain  mass  ahead  of  him,  the  fascination  of  the 
oudy  blue  heights  of  Fairfield,  which  he  sees,  and  the  know- 
dge  that  greater  Helvellyn  rises  beyond,  out  of  sight.  Bright 
reams,  Scandale  beck,  Rydal  beck,  come  down  from  the  right 

add  their  waters  to  the  Rothay.  Rydal  Hall  seems  to 
Dminate  the  valley,  with  Fairfield  and  his  tributary.  Nab  Scar, 
►weringjust  behind.  What  will  the  road  do  when  it  gets  under 
le  hills  ?  Will  it  take  Rydal  Hall  by  storm  and  be  carried  over 
le  mountains  ?  The  road,  followed  closely  by  our  ghostly  band, 
/oids  Rydal  and  gently  carries  us  to  the  left,  till  we  find  that 
e  are  in  a  valley  running  north-westward,  with  Nab  Scar  rising 
:eeply  on  the  right,  gentler  Loughrigg  opposite,  and  the  love- 
est  of  lakes  opening  before  us.  It  is  Rydal  lake,  out  of  which 
le  Rothay  has  come,  and  the  road  takes  us  for  about  a  mile  and 
half  along  its  whole  length.  At  its  further  extremity  we  are 
Dnfronted  by  a  shoulder  of  hill  which  must  be  either  surmounted 
r  circumvented.  The  modern  highroad  circumvents  it,  round- 
ig  the  lake,  and  keeping  close  to  the  Rothay,  which  is  here, 
gain,  murmuring  in  a  woody  gorge.     But  for  us  ghosts  of  1799 


U6  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

there  is  no  such  road  :  we  climb  straight  forward,  keeping  t( 
what  was  then  the  only  coach-road,  or  we  may,  if  we  will,  anc 
if  we  know  exactly  what  we  are  making  for,  keep  to  the  right 
following  bridle-paths  over  the  moss  and  the  rocks.     In  th(  ' 
thirties,  Dr.  Arnold  of  Rugby  christened  the  three  ways  fronij.' 
Rydal  to  Grasmere — beginning  with  the  rough  path  furthest  t(|i; 
the   right — Old    Corruption,    Bit-by -hit    Reform^    and    Radical 
Reform,     To-day  let  us  keep  to  the  Bit-by-bit  Reform  road  t 
it  is  wild  enough  for  anybody  ;  the  heather  is  still  aglow ;  thi  t. 
bright  moss  is  wet  with  trickling  streamlets  ;  there  is  scarle 
lichen  on  the  rocks  ;    though    only   the    creamy,   starfish-lik 
rosettes  of  the  butterwort  leaves  are  to  be  seen,  and  there  is  n;  iv 
chance  now  of  finding  even  a  late  specimen  of  the  pink  "  mealy  tt; 
primrose,  there  is  plenty  of  the  beautiful  grass  of  Parnassus  i  jc; 
the  boggy  places.     We  have  not  gone  far  before  we  realize  th? 
the  road  is  bearing  us  to  the  right,  and  then,  suddenly,  we  loo 
down  on  a  new  lake,  and  we  are  in  Grasmere  Vale. 

Grasmere  Vale,  with  its  long  oval  lake,  and  the  scattere 
hamlet  with  the  simple  church  at  its  further  or  north-western  en« 
was  to  be  Wordsworth's  home  for  thirteen  years.    It  is  more  tru 
and  vitally,  biographically  and  spiritually  as  well  as  scenically  ar 
physically,  the  centre  of  the  Lake  District  than  even  Amblesid»i 
from   above  which  we  first  took  stock  of  the  neighbourhooil. 
Endowed  with  the  utmost  beauty  granted  to  the  region,  as  beau ' 
ful,  essentially,  as  UUswater  or  Derwentwater,  it  has  a  repose,  j_ 
inwardness,  a  perfect  tranquillity,  which  are  all  its  own.     aA 
these  things  it  had  even  more  completely  when  Wordswon 
dwelt  within  it.     For  now,  though  no  railway-sounds  insult  , 
the  coach-road  from  Ambleside  to  Keswick  follows  closely  i; 
north-eastern  shore,  and  carries  a  constant  stream  of  pleasut- 
seeking  traffic  through  its  very  heart.     Wordsworth  lived  to  s; 
the  construction  of  that  road,  and  to  lament  it  with  the  indulgl 
querulousness  of  a  spoilt  poet.    But,  when  he  was  most  identifi  1 
with  the  vale,  the  road  ran  high  above  the  lake  and  at  sor2 
distance  back  from  it,  and  only  a  rough   path,  fit   for   poe;, 
anglers,  or   lovers,  lay   between    the   broad   expanse   and    s 
girdling  mountains. 

"  A  narrow  girdle  of  rough  stones  and  crags, 
A  rude  and  natural  causeway,  interposed 


i:atteo 

Dretm 

;iily 

iblesiii 

ourhoo 

ibeaii 


GRASMERE  127 

Between  the  water  and  a  winding  slope 
ffill,  a  Of  copse  and  thicket,  leaves  the  eastern  shore 

Of  Grasmere  safe  in  its  own  privacy." 

^^'     The  character  of  shy  inwardness  is  given  to  Grasmere  by  the 

'fo  it  that  it  lies  almost  at  right  angles  to  Rydal  and  not  in  line 

^^t  th  it,  so  that  the  traveller  has,  as  it  were,  to  seek  for  it  ere  he 

ds  it.     And  when  he  does  find  it,  and  his  eye  rests  on  its 
fo^  iet  church-tower,  and  on  the  mountains  that  rise  behind  the 

urch  and  the  village,  he  feels  that  no  more  central  citadel  is  to 
icar!  ;  won. 

jWi    As  a  schoolboy,  Wordsworth  had  looked  into  this  sweet  and 
i^i  >ly  place  on  a  summer's  day,  and  had  hoped  it  might  be  his 

t  to  live  and  die  there.     The  centre  of  his  Lakeland,  it  became 

e  centre  of  his  own  affections  and  genius.      Ke  thought  of  it 
^stlten  ;  and  the  place  became — 


"  As  beautiful  to  thought,  as  it  had  been 
When  present,  to  the  bodily  sense  ;  a  haunt 
Of  pure  affections,  shedding  upon  joy 
A  brighter  joy  ;  and  through  such  damp  and  gloom 
Of  the  gay  mind  as  ofttimes  splenetic  youth 
Mistakes  for  sorrow,  darting  beams  of  light 
That  no  self-cherished  sadness  could  withstand." 


And  now,  in  September,  1799,  ^^^  poet,  in  his  thirtieth  year, 
looking  down  on  the  lake  again.     With  his  companions,  he 
id  climbed  from  Rydal,  like  Benjamin  the  Waggoner  whom  he 
Ai  as  to  celebrate — 

"  Now  he  leaves  the  lower  ground. 
And  up  the  craggy  hill  ascending 
Many  a  stop  and  stay  he  makes, 
Many  a  breathing-fit  he  takes  ;— 
T'^p  Steep  the  way  and  wearisome  " 

niulgJrat  all  events  for  a  waggon-team  and  a  thirsty  driver !      After 

-  le  "  wishing-gate  "  is  passed,  the  road  descends  upon  the  lake 

;  „.:;ivel,  which  it  reaches  close  to  the  head  of  the  lake,  and  a  short 

f  podalf-mile  from  the  church.     Just  above  the  level,  on  the  right- 

judjand  side  of  the  road,  there  stood,  in  Wordsworth's  childhood, 

■  whitewashed  public-house,  the  "Dove   and   Olive   Bough,'* 

l/hich — 

"  Offered  a  greeting  of  good  ale 
To  all  who  entered  Grasmere  Vale  ; " 


128  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

but  now,  when  he  descends  the  hill  with  Coleridge  and  brothei 
John,  the  sign  is  gone  and  the  house  is  empty. 

The  travellers  stayed  some  days  at  Grasmere,  and  John  lef 
his  brother  and  Coleridge  there.  Both  were  delighted  with  th< 
place  in  spite  of  bad  weather ;  and  Wordsworth  had  what  h( 
was  afraid  Dorothy  would  consider  a  "  mad  "  idea  of  building  j 
house  by  the  lake.  If  that  was  a  mad  idea,  what  about  the  ok 
"  Dove  and  Olive  Bough,"  the  empty  cottage  at  "  Town  End, 
by  the  side  of  the  Ambleside  road  }  Might  that  not  do  for  j 
home  ?  On  his  return  to  Sockburn  Wordsworth  talked  ove 
the  matter  with  Dorothy,  and  the  end  of  it  was  that  the  empt; 
cottage  at  Town  End  was  taken,  to  be  the  home  first  of  th 
brother  and  sister  and  then  of  the  brother's  wife  as  well,  for  nin 
years,  and  to  be  famous  as  "  Dove  Cottage"  for  evermore. 

It  was  on  one  of  the  last  days  of  the  year,  St.  Thomas'  Da) 
1799,  that  the  "flitting"  from  Yorkshire  was  made.  The  tW' 
companions  did  it  on  foot,  coming  by  Askrigg,  and  throug 
Wensleydale  (where  they  heard  the  story  of  "  Hart  Leap  Well  * 
to  Kendal,  and  so  on  into  the  vale.  "  On  Nature's  invitation 
he  sang  afterwards  : — 

"  On  Nature's  invitation  do  I  come, 
By  Reason  sanctioned." 

"  Bleak  was  it,"  he  went  on  : — 

"  Bleak  season  was  it,  turbulent  and  bleak, 
When  hitherward  we  journeyed  side  by  side 
Through  burst  of  sunshine  and  through  flying  showers  ; 

Stern  was  the  face  of  Nature  ;  we  rejoiced 

In  that  stern  countenance,  for  our  souls  thence  drew 

A  feeling  of  their  strength.     The  naked  trees, 

The  icy  brooks,  as  on  we  passed,  appeared 

To  question  us.     '  Whence  come  ye,  to  what  end  ? ' 

They  seemed  to  say, '  What  would  ye?' 

Said  the  shower, 
'  Wild  Wanderers,  whither  through  my  dark  domain  ? ' 
The  sunbeam  said,  '  Be  happy.'    When  this  vale 
We  entered,  bright  and  solemn  was  the  sky 
That  faced  us  with  a  passionate  welcoming. 
And  led  us  to  our  threshold." 


at-' 
is  fee 
aflc  ''^ 

Alfcx- 
the:: 
rit^:- 
bee:.t 


The  Grasmere  years,  thus  entered  upon,  are,  beyond  questio 
the  central  period  of  Wordsworth's  poetic  life.     That  life  beai 


, 


^broi 


GRASMERE  129 


'M 


at  its  strongest  under  the  humble  roof  of  Dove  Cottage,  and 

is  fed  to  its  richest  results,  by  the  scenes  and  the  folk,  the  hills 

and   the  wild  vales  of  that   narrow  place.      For  one   thing — 

^ji 'Iperhaps  for  chief  thing — the  blessing  of  Windybrow,  Racedown, 

Alfoxden,  and  Goslar  was  continued  to  the  poet :   he  there  had 

^  -the  companionship  of  Dorothy,  and  he  had  it  for  a  year  or  two 

i^^  ^  without  the  distraction  of  new  family  love.     As  his  sister  had 

been  to  him  on  the  banks  of  Wye,  so  she  was  on  the  shores 

of  Grasmere.     As  he  thinks  of  her,  he  asks  his  very  heart  to 

pause  on  the  thought. 


:t!ie 
ciofof 


Well 


"  Pause  upon  that  and  let  the  breathing  frame 
No  longer  breathe,  but  all  be  satisfied. 


.     Mine  eyes  did  ne'er 
Fix  on  a  lovely  object,  nor  my  mind 
Take  pleasure  in  the  midst  of  happy  thoughts, 
But  either  she  whom  now  I  have,  who  now 
Divides  with  me  this  loved  abode,  was  there 
Or  not  far  off.     Where'er  my  footsteps  turned 
Her  voice  was  like  a  hidden  Bird  that  sang, 
The  thought  of  her  was  like  a  flash  of  light 
Or  an  unseen  companionship,  a  breath 
Of  fragrance  independent  of  the  Wind." 

In  the  fragment  of  T/ie  Recluse  from  which  these  lines  are 
taken,  Wordsworth  gives  his  version  of  the  setting  of  his  new 
home. 

"  Embrace  me,  then,  ye  Hills,  and  close  me  in  ; 
Now  in  the  clear  and  open  day  I  feel 
Your  guardianship  ;  I  take  it  to  my  heart  ; 
'Tis  like  the  solemn  shelter  of  the  night. 
But  I  would  call  thee  beautiful,  for  mild, 
And  soft,  and  gay,  and  beautiful  thou  art, 
Dear  Valley,  having  in  thy  face  a  smile 
Though  peaceful,  full  of  gladness.     Thou  art  pleased, 
Pleased  with  thy  crags  and  woody  steeps,  thy  Lake, 
Its  one  green  island  and  its  winding  shores ; 
The  multitude  of  little  rocky  hills, 
Thy  Church  and  cottages  of  mountain  stone 
Clustered  like  stars  some  few,  but  single  most. 
And  lurking  dimly  in  their  shy  retreats, 
Or  glancing  at  each  other  cheerful  looks 
Like  separated  stars  with  clouds  between." 


130  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

All  the  sights  and  sounds  of  beautiful  country  are  here,  but 
at  Grasnaere  there  is  something  beyond  these. 

"  These  have  we,  and  a  thousand  nooks  of  earth 
Have  also  these,  but  nowhere  else  is  found 
The  one  sensation  that  is  here  ;  'tis  here, 
Here  as  it  found  its  way  into  my  heart 
In  childhood,  here  as  it  abides  by  day, 
By  night,  here  only ;  or  in  chosen  minds 
That  take  it  with  them  hence,  where'er  they  go. 
— 'Tis,  but  I  cannot  name  it,  'ds  the  sense 
Of  majesty,  and  beauty,  and  repose, 
A  blended  holiness  of  earth  and  sky, 
Something  that  makes  this  individual  spot, 
This  small  abiding-place  of  many  men, 
A  termination,  and  a  last  retreat, 
A  centre,  come  from  wheresoe'er  you  will. 
A  whole  without  dependence  or  defect, 
Made  for  itself,  and  happy  in  itself. 
Perfect  contentment.  Unity  entire." 

Thanks  to  the  poetry  and  patriotism  of  an  eminent  English- 
man, himself  a  poet  and  a  richly  endowed  critic,  Dove  Cottage 
is  now  national  property,  kept  as  Wordsworth  made  it,  and 
accessible  to  every  reverent  foot  and  eye.  Let  us  enter,  then, 
and  look  round. 

Behind  the  cottage  the  hill  rises  steeply,  so  steeply  and  so 
immediately  that  the  garden  and  orchard  with  which  Words- 
worth's verse  has  made  us  so  familiar  must  be  a  veritable 
hanging  garden.  For  between  the  house  and  the  road  there  is 
no  room  for  pleasure  ground  of  any  kind  ;  you  could  drop  a 
stone  sheer  from  the  latticed  windows  on  the  road  below.  The 
pretty  diamond  panes  give  charm  to  the  plain  white  front  of  the 
house,  up  which  creepers  climb.  When  De  Quincey  first  saw  it 
two  yew  trees  broke  the  "  glare  "  of  the  white  walls.  There  is  a 
little  gate  in  the  rough  stone  wall,  and  the  door  opens  at  the  end 
and  not  in  the  front  of  the  house.  What  De  Quincey  calls 
"  a  little  semi-vestibule  "  brings  you  to  the  principal  ground-floor 
room  (the  only  room  on  the  ground  floor,  in  fact,  except 
Dorothy's  bedroom  and  the  kitchen).  It  is  a  quaint  little 
living-room,  with  a  most  serviceable  and  kitchen-like  fireplace, 
and  De  Quincey,  who  knew  it  so  well,  shall  describe  it.  "  An 
oblong  square  not  above  eight  and  a  half  feet  high,  sixteen  feet 


I 


:tage 
and 
ieo, 

jdso 
ordy 

:ere 
rop 

The 
of  the 
^w 
re  is  a 
leend 

calls 
i.3oof 
;xcept 

little 

fij 

■sfeet^ 


i 


GRASMERE  131 

long,  and  twelve  broad  ;  very  prettily  wainscoted  from  the  floor 
to  the  ceiling  with  dark  polished  oak,  slightly  embellished  with 
carving.  One  window  there  was — a  perfect  and  unpretending 
cottage  window,  with  little  diamond  panes  embowered  at  every 
season  of  the  year  with  roses  ;  and,  in  the  summer  and  autumn, 
with  a  profusion  of  jasmine  and  other  fragrant  shrubs.  From 
the  exuberant  luxuriance  of  the  vegetation  around  it,  and  from 
the  dark  hue  of  the  wainscoting,  this  window,  though  tolerably 
large,  did  not  furnish  a  very  powerful  light."  This  was  the 
essential  family-room,  the  dining-room  of  the  Wordsworths.  A 
modest  staircase  of  fourteen  steps  (so  De  Quincey  had  counted) 
brings  one  to  the  corresponding  two  rooms  above,  a  little 
drawing-room  over  the  dining-room,  and  Wordsworth's  bedroom 
over  Dorothy's.  In  the  drawing-room,  too,  the  fireplace  is 
kitchen-like ;  the  room  has  old-fashioned  high-backed  chairs 
with  Dorothy's  work  on  the  seats ;  and  it  was  Wordsworth's 
study,  "  for  in  a  small  recess "  there  are  bookshelves,  and  in 
those  bookshelves  reposed  the  library  of  the  most  unbookish  of 
poets,  a  collection  of  "  perhaps  three  hundred  volumes."  There 
are  two  other  small  rooms  upstairs  :  one  specially  tiny  one 
without  a  fireplace  the  Wordsworths  built,  and  Dorothy  papered 
it,  and  the  tiny  passage  leading  to  it,  with  newspapers. 

De  Ouincey  did  not  see  Dove  Cottage  until  1807.  When 
the  Wordsworths  took  it  there  were  no  creepers  on  the  walb, 
but  the  new  tenants  at  once  set  about  planting  roses  and 
honeysuckle,  and  in  their  first  year  had  a  bright  show  of  scarlet 
runner  against  the  whitewash.  Come  out  now  through  a  back- 
door into  the  steep  garden  and  orchard  behind ;  for  here 
probably  more  Wordsworthianism  came  to  the  birth  than 
within  any  of  the  walls.  The  rough  stone  steps  leading  up  the 
incline  are  there  as  Wordsworth  laid  them  ;  there  are  such 
flowers  as  he  planted,  and  the  well  he  made  ;  there  are  the 
apple-trees  which  justify  the  word  "  orchard  "  ;  there,  at  the  top 
of  the  steep  little  enclosure,  is  the  view-point,  and  there  was  the 
moss-hut  in  the  old  days.  There  were  then  no  stifling  houses, 
no  prosaic  chimney-tops  between  the  cottage  and  the  lake ; 
there  was  no  big  modern  hotel  ;  there  were  no  crowds  of 
pleasure-seekers.  Nothing  disturbed  the  feeling  of  "  termina- 
tion "  and  of  "  last  retreat."  In  his  delightful  pamphlet  about 
Dove  Cottage,  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke  has  said  all  that  needs  to  be 


132  AVORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

said  or  can  be  said  about  the  garden  and  orchard  in  their  vital 
relation  to  Wordsworth's  poetry.  But  indeed  we  need  not  go 
beyond  the  limits  of  that  poetry,  supplemented  by  Dorothy's 
prose,  to  be  able  to  feel  our  way  about  the  little  enclosure  as 
well  as  out  beyond  it.  Here  was  the  hedge-sparrow's  nest  with 
the  "bright  blue  eggs"  which  recalled  a  similar  one  in  the 
Cockermouth  garden. 

"  On  me  the  chance-discovered  sight 
Gleamed  like  a  vision  of  delight. 
I  started — seeming  to  espy 
The  home  and  sheltered  bed, 
The  sparrow's  dwelling,  which,  hard  by 
My  Father's  house,  in  wet  or  dry 
My  sister  Emmeline  and  I 
Together  visited." 

["  Emmeline"  is, of  course,  conventional-poetical  for  Dorothy] — 

"  She  looked  at  it  and  seemed  to  fear  it ; 
Dreading,  tho'  wishing,  to  be  near  it ; 
Such  heart  was  in  her,  being  then 
A  little  Prattler  among  men. 
The  Blessing  of  my  later  years 
Was  with  me  when  a  boy  : 
She  gave  me  eyes,  she  gave  me  ears  ; 
A  heart,  the  fountain  of  sweet  tears  ; 
And  love,  and  thought,  and  joy." 

It  was  from  the  orchard  that  the  cuckoo  was  heard— 

"  While  I  am  lying  on  the  grass 
Thy  twofold  shout  I  hear. 

And  I  can  listen  to  thee  yet ; 

Can  lie  upon  the  plain. 
And  listen,  till  I  do  beget 

That  golden  time  again." 

Here,  in  and  out  of  this  apple  or  pear  tree,  flashed  the  green 
linnet,  the  "Brother  of  the  dancing  leaves,"  whose  song,  "poured 
forth  in  gushes,"  is  so  unrealistically  described.  Here  on  the 
turf  shone  the  celandine  and  the  daisy,  to  the  former  of  which 
Wordsworth  sang  two  songs,  and  to  the  latter  three.  Here  the  9 
robin  was  scolded  for  chasing  a  butterfly — 


-> 

t'-- 


J 


^eas 


GRASMERE  133 

"  Would'st  thou  be  happy  in  thy  nest, 

0  pious  Bird,  whom  man  loves  best, 
Love  him,  or  leave  him  alone  !  " 

Here  the  butterfly  itself  was  apostrophized — 

"  I've  watched  you  now  a  full  half-hour. 
Self-poised  upon  that  yellow  flower  ; 
And,  little  Butterfly !  indeed 

1  know  not  if  you  sleep  or  feed. 
How  motionless  ! — not  frozen  seas 
More  motionless  !  and  then 
What  joy  awaits  you,  when  the  breeze 
Hath  found  you  out  among  the  trees, 
And  calls  you  forth  again  ! 

"  This  plot  of  orchard-ground  is  ours  ; 
My  trees  they  are,  my  Sister's  flowers  ; 
Here  rest  your  wings  when  they  are  weary  ; 
Here  lodge  as  in  a  sanctuary  ! 
Come  often  to  us,  fear  no  wrong  ; 
Sit  near  us  on  the  bough  ! 
We'll  talk  of  sunshine  and  of  song. 
And  summer  days,  when  we  were  young  ; 
Sweet  childish  days,  that  were  as  long 
As  twenty  days  are  now." 

Here  is  the  "  rocky  Well "  beside  which  were  planted  the 
globe-flowers  and  marsh-marigolds  from  the  lake-side.  Here 
on  the  grass  lay  Coleridge  in  the  early  Grasmere  days,  and 
here  Wordsworth  looked  at  him  and  sang  of  him  that  mysterious 
song  so  hard  to  interpret — the  Stanzas  written  in  my  Pocket- 
Copy  of  Thomson's  Castle  of  Indolence.  Who  is  who  in  that 
poem.?  *     This,  anyhow,  must  be  Coleridge — 

"  Ah  !  piteous  sight  it  was  to  see  this  Man 
When  he  came  back  to  us,  a  withered  flower, — 
Or,  like  a  sinful  creature,  pale  and  wan. 
Down  would  he  sit ;  and  without  strength  or  power 
Look  at  the  common  grass  from  hour  to  hour  : 
And  oftentimes,  how  long  I  fear  to  say. 
Where  apple-trees  in  blossom  made  a  bower. 
Retired  in  that  sunshiny  shade  he  lay  ; 
gjjfed  And,  like  a  naked  Indian,  slept  himself  away." 

D  IDS  *  I  myself  incline  to  the  belief  that  the  second  character — the  "noticeable  Man 

jcbidl  with  large  grey  eyes  " — is  neither  Coleridge  nor  Wordsworth  but  some  one  else,  very 
^  ,ij     likely,  as  has  been  conjectured,  William  Calvert,  Raisley  Calvert's  brother.     But  no 

theory  removes  all  the  difficulties.     See  Mr.  Knight's  notes  on  the  poem,  "  Knight's 

Wordsworth,"  II.  307-9,  and  Appendix. 


ineeJ 


J 


134  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

Beyond  the  limits  of  the  garden  and  the  orchard,  up  on  the 
heights  above  the  old  Ambleside  road,  and  round  the  crescent 
at  the  head  of  the  lake — Easedale  opening  on  the  other  side, 
and  Dunmail  Raise  rising  up  behind — how  full  was  the  tide  of 
poetry  between  1800  and  1808 !  Hammer  Scar  and  the  Helm 
and  Silver  How,  there  they  all  are  ;  down  Easedale  yonder, 
runs  the  rivulet  by  which  the  poet  roamed  "  in  the  confusion  of 
his  heart  "  one  April  morning  ;  the  rivulet  which — 

"  Sent  forth  such  sallies  of  glad  sound,  that  all 
Which  I  till  then  had  heard,  appeared  the  voice 
Of  common  pleasure  :  beast  and  bird,  the  lamb, 
The  shepherd's  dog,  the  linnet  and  the  thrush 
Vied  with  this  waterfall,  and  made  a  song, 
Which,  while  I  listened,  seemed  like  the  wild  growth 
Or  hke  some  natural  produce  of  the  air, 
That  could  not  cease  to  be." 

Very  different  associations  cling  to  "  the  boisterous  brook  of 
Greenhead  Ghyll "  which  tumbles  down  through  a  wild  chink 
in  the  hills  that  rise  on  the  right  about  half  a  mile  out  of 
Grasmere  as  you  mount  the  Raise  northwards  ;  for  there  is  the 
**  unfinished  sheepfold,"  and  there  (as  Wordsworth  arranged 
certain  facts)  the  tragedy  of  MicJiael  was  accomplished.  Up 
the  Raise  road  to  Wythburn  and  Thirlmere,  toiled  the 
Waggoner's  horses.  Stone-Arthur  is  on  the  right,  the  ^*  Eminence 
of  these  our  hills  " — which  can  7iot  be  seen  from  the  Dove 
Cottage  orchard,  though  it  suited  the  poet  to  say  that  it  could — 
the  hill  which,  as  William  and  Dorothy  walked  on  the  road, 
seemed  to  restore  their  hearts  with  its  "  deep  quiet " ;  in 
truth— 

"  The  loneliest  place  we  have  among  the  clouds." 

Dorothy  named  it  after  her  brother — 

"  She  who  dwells  with  me,  whom  I  have  loved 
With  such  communion  that  no  place  on  earth 

Can  ever  be  a  solitude  to  me,  ,  , 

Hath  to  this  lonely  summit  given  my  Name."  '',,    7--'' 


Was  that  the  mountain-top  upon  which  the  star  listened  to 
the  voices  of  earth  on  that  September  evening  in  1806,  when 
the  poet  had  *'just  read  in  a  newspaper  that  the  dissolution  of 
Mr.  Fox  was  hourly  expected  "  ?     What  an  evening  for  such  a 


GRASMERE  135 

poet  to  realize  that  such  a  man  was  passing  "to  breathless 
Nature's  dark  abyss  !  "  Wordsworth  had  loved  Fox  because  he 
loved  French  liberty ;  for  him  he  was  both  good  and  great. 

"  Loud  is  the  Vale  !  the  Voice  is  up 
With  which  she  speaks  when  storms  are  gone, 
A  mighty  unison  of  streams  ! 
Of  all  her  Voices,  One  ! 

"  Loud  is  the  Vale  ;— this  inland  Depth 
In  peace  is  roaring  like  the  Sea  ; 
Yon  star  upon  the  mountain-top 
Is  listening  quietly. 


When  the  great  and  good  depart 
What  is  it  more  than  this — 

"That  Man,  who  is  from  God  sent  forth, 
Doth  yet  again  to  God  return  ?" 


Up  towards  the  wild  V^hite-moss,  across  which  comes  the 
highest  route  from  Rydal,  and  quite  near  the  Town  End 
Cottage,  there  are  at  least  two  spots  sacred  to  genius.  There 
is  the  "stately  Fir  grove,"  which  was  *'a  favourite  haunt  with 
us  all,"  and  which  offered  a  grateful  shelter  in  the  snowy  days 
of  the  first  winter  at  Grasmere.     It  was — 

"  A  cloistral  place 
Of  refuge,  with  an  unencumbered  floor. 
Here,  in  soft  covert,  on  the  shallow  snow, 
And  sometimes,  on  a  speck  of  visible  earth, 
The  redbreast  near  me  hopped." 

Here  would  come  stray  sheep,  "stragglers  from  some 
mountain-flock,"  surveying  the  pacing  poet  "with  suspicious 
stare  "— 

"  Huddling  together  from  two  fears— the  fear 
Of  me  and  of  the  storm." 

And,  as  we  shall  find  in  the  next  chapter,  the  place  had 
deeper  and  dearer  associations.  In  that  direction,  too,  a  few 
hundred  yards  from  the  cottage,  one  autumn  day  in  1800, 
Wordsworth  met  the  hero  of  Resolution  and  Independence,  an 
old  leech-gatherer  bent  double,  with  an  apron  and  a  night-cap, 
who  was  on  his  way  to  Carlisle  to  try  to  make  a  living  by 
selling  "godly  books."  He  told  him  his  story,  and  the  poet 
afterwards  placed  him   in   a  different  setting  of  scenery.      It 


I 


136  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

was  not  at  Grasmere  but  on  Barton  Fell,  near  the  north- 
eastern end  of  Ullswater,  that  Wordsworth  walked  one  morning 
after  a  night  of  wind  and  rain — 

"  There  was  a  roaring  in  the  wind  all  night ; 
The  rain  came  heavily  and  fell  in  floods  ; 
But  now  the  sun  is  rising  calm  and  bright ; 
The  birds  are  singing  in  the  distant  woods  ; 
Over  his  own  sweet  voice  the  Stock-dove  broods  ; 
The  Jay  makes  answer  as  the  Magpie  chatters  ; 
And  all  the  air  is  filled  with  pleasant  noise  of  waters. 

"  All  things  that  love  the  sun  are  out  of  doors  ; 
The  sky  rejoices  in  the  morning's  birth  ; 
The  grass  is  bright  with  rain-drops  ; — on  the  moors 
The  hare  is  running  races  in  her  mirth  ; 
And  with  her  feet  she  from  the  plashy  earth 
Raises  a  mist,  that,  glittering  in  the  sun, 
Runs  with  her  all  the  way,  wherever  she  doth  run." 

It  was  there  and  then  that  the  poet  fell  into  despondency ; 
that— • 

"  Fears  and  fancies  thick  upon  me  came  ; 
Dim  sadness — and  blind  thoughts,  I  knew  not,  nor  could  name." 

He  felt  himself  little  better  than  an  idler:  he  thought  of 
Chatterton,  of  Burns  ;  he  was  in  Burns's  mood  when  he  sang — 

"All  in  this  mottie,  misty  clime, 
I  backward  mus'd  on  wasted  time. 
How  I  had  spent  my  youthfu'  prime, 

And  done  nae-thing, 
But  stringin'  blethers  up  in  rhyme,  ^ 

For  fools  to  sing."  v 

Recollecting  the  emotion  in  tranquillity,  he  associated  with 
his  walk  on  Barton  Fell,  the  leech-gatherer  he  met  near  Dove , 
Cottage ;  he  placed  him  at  his  trade  by  a  lonely  pool ;  the  old .; 
man   stood   out   before   his   memory,   before   his    imagination, 
a  completely  idealized  figure,  "  not  all  alive,  nor  dead,"  reveal- 
ing himself  in  simile  after  simile — 

"  As  a  huge  stone  is  sometimes  seen  to  lie  * 

Couched  on  the  bald  top  of  an  eminence  ;  I 
Wonder  to  all  who  do  the  same  espy. 

By  what  means  it  could  thither  come,  and  whence  ;  i 

So  that  it  seems  a  thing  endued  with  sense  :  i 


Eo  y 

rli:: 


GRASMERE  137 

Like  a  sea-beast  crawled  forth,  that  on  a  shelf 
Of  rock  or  sand  reposeth,  there  to  sun  itself. 

Upon  the  margin  of  that  moorish  flood 
Motionless  as  a  cloud  the  old  Man  stood, 
Jj  That  heareth  not  the  loud  winds  when  they  call 

And  moveth  all  together,  if  it  move  at  all." 

m0 

As  he  stirred  the  pool  in  an  almost  hopeless  task,  and  for 
a  pittance  which  it  were  mockery  to  call  a  livelihood,  and  yet 
kept  his  cheerfulness  and  dignity,  his  "rights  of  a  man,"  he 
became  for  the  poet  the  permanent  symbol  of  resolution  and 
independence  ;  so  that  he — 


\ 


Could  have  laughed  himself  to  scorn  to  find 
In  that  decrepit  Man  so  firm  a  mind." 


iency 


!?ht 


By  the  side  of  the  middle  road,  and  overlooking  the  lake, 
stands  the  "  Wishing-Gate,"  near  which  Wordsworth  met  "  The 
Sailor's  Mother."  Further  on,  on  the  Rydal  side  of  the  hill, 
where  the  three  roads  into  Grasmere  diverge,  were  The  Beggars 
about  whom  Dorothy  told  her  brother. 

In  1802,  not  much  more  than  two  years  after  the  brother 
and  sister  came  to  Grasmere,  they  went  across  the  mountains 
into  Yorkshire  to  fetch  William's  bride,  Mary  Hutchinson. 
Before  starting,  William  wrote  A  Farewell  to  his  home,  of 
which  the  whole  may  well  be  quoted,  not  only  for  its  beauty, 
but  because  of  its  clear  showing  of  their  life  in  the  place — 

"  Farewell,  thou  little  Nook  of  mountain  ground, 
Thou  rocky  corner  in  the  lowest  stair 
Of  that  magnificent  temple  which  doth  bound 
One  side  of  one  whole  vale  with  grandeur  rare  ; 
Sweet  garden-orchard,  eminently  fair, 
The  loveliest  spot  that  man  hath  ever  found, 
Farewell ! — we  leave  thee  to  Heaven's  peaceful  care. 
Thee,  and  the  Cottage  which  thou  dost  surround. 

"  Our  boat  is  safely  anchored  by  the  shore. 
And  there  will  safely  ride  when  we  are  gone  ; 
The  flowering  shrubs  that  deck  our  humble  door 
Will  prosper,  though  untended  and  alone  : 
Fields,  goods,  and  far-off  chattels  we  have  none : 
These  narrow  bounds  contain  our  private  store 
Of  things  earth  makes,  and  sun  doth  shine  upon  ; 
Here  are  they  in  our  sight — we  have  no  more. 


A- 


138  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

"  Sunshine  and  shower  be  with  you,  bud  and  bell ! 
For  two  months  now  in  vain  we  shall  be  sought ; 
We  leave  you  here  in  solitude  to  dwell 
With  these  our  latest  gifts  of  tender  thought  ; 
Thou,  like  the  morning,  in  thy  saffron  coat, 
Bright  gowan,  and  marsh-marigold,  farewell  ! 
Whom  from  the  borders  of  the  Lake  we  brought, 
And  placed  together  near  our  rocky  Well.  ^^  ■ 

"  We  go  for  One  to  whom  ye  will  be  dear  ;  ^  . 

And  she  will  prize  this  Bower,  this  Indian  shed, 
Our  own  contrivance.  Building  without  peer  !  i 

— A  gentle  Maid,  whose  heart  is  lowly  bred,  ji:. 

Whose  pleasures  are  in  wild  fields  gathered, 
With  joyousness,  and  with  a  thoughtful  cheer, 
Will  come  to  you  ;  to  you  herself  will  wed  ; 
And  love  the  blessed  life  that  we  lead  here.  ^' 


lEC 


"  Dear  spot !  which  we  have  watched  with  tender  heed,  ^'^■ 

Bringing  thee  chosen  plants  and  blossoms  blown 
Among  the  distant  mountains,  flower  and  weed. 
Which  thou  hast  taken  to  thee  as  thy  own, 
Making  all  kindness  registered  and  known  ; 
Thou  for  our  sakes,  though  Nature's  child  indeed, 
Fair  in  thyself  and  beautiful  alone. 
Hast  taken  gifts  which  thou  dost  little  need. 

"  And  O  most  constant,  yet  most  fickle  Place, 
That  hast  thy  wayward  moods,  as  thou  dost  show 
To  them  who  look  not  daily  on  thy  face. ; 
Who,  being  loved,  in  love  no  bounds  dost  know. 
And  say'st,  when  we  forsake  thee,  '  Let  them  go  ! ' 
Thou  easy-hearted  Thing,  with  Thy  wild  race 
Of  weeds  and  flowers,  till  we  return  be  slow, 
And  travel  with  the  year  at  a  soft  pace. 

"  Help  us  to  tell  Her  tales  of  years  gone  by, 
And  this  sweet  spring,  the  best  beloved  and  best ; 
Joy  will  be  flown  in  its  mortality ; 
Something  must  stay  to  tell  us  of  the  rest. 
Here,  thronged  with  primroses,  the  steep  rock's  breast 
Glittered  at  evening  like  a  starry  sky  ; 
And  in  this  bush  our  Sparrow  built  her  nest, 
Of  which  I  sang  one  song  that  will  not  die. 

"  O  happy  Garden  !  whose  seclusion  deep 
Hath  been  so  friendly  to  industrious  hours  ; 
And  to  soft  slumbers,  that  did  gently  steep 
Our  spirits,  canying  with  them  dreams  of  flowers, 


GRASMERE  139 

And  wild  notes  warbled  among  leafy  bowers  ; 
Two  burning  months  let  summer  overleap, 
And,  coming  back  with  Her  who  will  be  ours, 
Into  thy  bosom  we  again  shall  creep." 

After  Wordsworth's  descriptive  and  allusive  Grasmere 
oetry,  the  next  best  original  authorities  for  the  Grasmere  life 
re  Dorothy's  Journals,  and  Wordsworth's  central  poetry,  which 
vais,  in  its  fulness,  planned  and  carried  out  there,  at  Dove 
Cottage  up  to  1808  ;  then,  from  1808  to  181 1,  at  Allan  Bank, 
ound  the  head  of  the  lake  ;  and  at  Grasmere  Parsonage,  from 
811  to  1813. 

One  side  of  the  life,  its  daily  character,  its  occupations,  joys, 
md  trials,  is  faithfully  mirrored  in  Dorothy's  Journals.  If  by  a 
)oetic  life  is  meant  a  life  of  "  plain  living  and  high  thinking," 
)f  simplicity  and  communion  with  Nature,  surely  no  life  more 
)oetic  than  this  one  was  ever  lived.  And,  as  in  the  west 
ountry,  so  now  here  among  the  Lakes,  the  part  played  by 
Dorothy  was  as  important,  as  significant,  as  the  part  played  by 
W"illiam — 

"  She  gave  me  eyes,  she  gave  me  ears, 
A  heart,  the  fountain  of  sweet  tears, 
And  love  and  thought  and  joy." 

If  that  was  true  in  the  garden  of  childhood  by  the  Derwent, 
f  it  was  true  among  the  coombs  of  Quantock  and  in  the  groves 
)f  Alfoxden,  it  was  equally  true  in  the  holy  place  of  Grasmere. 
If  William  was  the  interpreter  of  Nature,  Dorothy  was  its  ^ 
registrar.  And,  as  at  Alfoxden  her  observation  and  registration 
were  those  of  a  poet  and  not  of  a  naturalist,  so  was  it  at  Gras- 
mere. "  More  than  half  a  poet "  she  records  that  she  felt  in 
one  moment  of  special  rapture ;  but  indeed  she  was  wholly,  if 
but  potentially,  a  poet  at  all  times.  There  is,  in  the  later  as  in 
the  earlier  Journals,  in  the  utterance  of  maturest  womanhood 
as  in  the  effervescence  of  a  girl's  enthusiasm,  the  same  devotion 
to  the  beautiful;  the  same  spontaneity  and  orginality  of 
expression  ;  the  same  charm  of  phrase  ;  the  same  startling 
vigour,  at  once  realistic  and  imaginative,  of  epithet  and  simile. 
Her  observation  has  an  artist's  minuteness  ;  it  gives  material 
for  a  thousand  pictures.  The  commonest  things  are  seen 
afresh,  and  invested  with  undying  interest.  Is  it  the  old  moon 
in  the  new  moon's  arms  ?     "  On  Friday  evening  the  moon  hung 


lii!: 

ina:.; 


140  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

over  the  northern  side  of  the  highest  point  of  Silver  How,  like  \^^- 
a  gold  ring  snapped  in  two,  and  shaven  off  at  the  ends.  Within  '^'' 
this  ring  lay  the  circle  of  the  round  moon,  as  distinctly  to  be 
seen  as  ever  the  enlightened  moon  is.  William  had  observed 
the  same  appearance  at  Keswick."  Is  it  a  birch  tree  in  a 
strong  October  wind  ?  "  It  was  yielding  to  the  gusty  windj'^ 
with  all  its  tender  twigs.  The  sun  shone  upon  it,  and  it  glanced 
in  the  wind  like  a  flying  sunshiny  shower.  It  was  a  tree  in  shape, 
with  stem  and  branches,  but  it  was  like  a  spirit  of  water.  .  .  .  The}|"^'- 
other  birch  trees  that  were  near  it  looked  bright  and  cheerful, 
but  it  was  a  creature  by  its  own  self  among  them."  What  effects' 
on  the  water  she  saw  ;  what  mi7inticB  and  mysteries  of  colour !| is*' 
"  Rydal  was  very  beautiful,  with  spear-shaped  streaks  of  polished j!"^^ 
steel."  "The  moon  shone  like  herrings  in  the  water."  "We 
walked  round  Rydal  lake,  rich,  calm,  streaked,  very  beautiful." 
"  We  amused  ourselves  for  a  long  time  in  watching  the  breezes, 
some  as  if  they  came  from  the  bottom  of  the  lake,  spread  in  a 
circle,  brushing  along  the  surface  of  the  water,  and  growing  more 
delicate  [and]  as  it  were  thinner,  and  of  a  paler  colour  till  they 
died  away."  "  We  walked  before  tea  by  Bainriggs  to  observe 
the  many-coloured  foliage.  The  oaks  dark  green  with  yellow 
leaves,  the  birches  generally  still  green,  some  near  the  waterf-"-  - 
yellowish,  the  sycamore  crimson  and  crimson-tufted,  the  mountain 
ash  a  deep  orange,  the  common  ash  lemon-colour,  but  many 
ashes  still  fresh  in  their  peculiar  green,  those  that  were  dis- 
coloured near  the  water."  What  intimacy  with  moon  and  stars  ! 
"  The  moon  shone  upon  the  waters  below  Silver  How,  and 
above  it  hung  (combining  with  Silver  How  on  one  side)  a  bowl-i 
shaped  moon,  the  curve  downwards  ;  the  white  fields  ;  glittering 
roof  of  Thomas  Ashburner's  house ;  the  dark  yew  tree  ;  the^ 
white  fields,  gay  and  beautiful.  William  lay  with  his  curtains 
open  that  he  might  see  it."  "  O,  the  unutterable  darkness  of 
the  sky,  and  the  earth  below  the  moon,  and  the  glorious  bright-, 
ness  of  the  moon  itself!  There  was  a  vivid  sparkling  streak  of 
light  at  this  end  of  Rydal  Water,  but  the  rest  was  very  dark, 
and  Loughrigg  Fell  and  Silver  How  were  white  and  bright,  aS' 
if  they  were  covered  with  hoar  frost.  The  moon  retired  again,' 
and  appeared  and  disappeared  several  times  before  I  reached 
home."  "A  sober  starlight  evening.  The  stars  not  shiningj^r.:^ 
as  it  were  with  all  their  brightness  when  they  were  visible,  and 


ec.:.: 

(fu. 

iiG  :.. 
f.c:. 


taatiful, 
breezes! 


I  GRASMERE  141 

lometimes  hiding  themselves  behind  small  greying  clouds,  that 
lassed  soberly  along."  "Jupiter  was  very  glorious  above  the 
i^mbleside  hills,  and  one  large  star  hung  over  the  corner  of  the 
tills  on  the  opposite  side  of  Rydal  Water."  "  When  we  returned 
lany  stars  were  out,  the  clouds  were  moveless.  .  .  .  Jupiter 
ehind.  Jupiter  at  least  we  call  him,  but  William  says  we  always 
all  the  largest  star  Jupiter." 

As  at  Alfoxden,  so  here,  Dorothy  entered  deeply  into  her 

rother's  work.      Yet  the  Journals  do  not  show  that  she  gave 

im  much  direct  help  except  that  of  an  amanuensis — which, 

ideed,  in  the  case  of  one  so  marvellously  averse  from  writing 

s  Wordsworth,  was  no  small  benefit.     She  was  aware  of  each 

xliilie#iece  of  his  work,  and  intensely,  lovingly,  sympathetic  with  him 

"W  3  it  all.     Sometimes  one  feels  as  if  the  sympathy  were  too 

sminine  and  sentimental  to  be  invigorating.     After  the  manner 

f  poets,  Wordsworth  was  fastidious,  neurotic,  and  moody  in  his 

e-iinft^ork  ;  and  one  feels,  at  times,  that  it  would  have  been  good  if 

:7[iior(  is  sister  had  scolded  or  laughed  at  him.     "  We  sat  by  the  fire, 

[ithej  md  did  not  walk,  but  read  The  Pedlar ^  thinking  it  done;  but 

osem  A/",  could  find  fault  with  one  part  of  it.     It  was  uninteresting, 

nd  must  be  altered.      Poor  William !  "     "  We  read   the  first 

)art  and  were  delighted  with  it,  but  William  afterwards  got  to 

yjp,taii  ome  ugly  place,   and  went  to  bed  tired  out."     Writing   The 

Uech  Gatherer  "  tired  "  him  "  to  death."    "  William  worked  at  The  ^ 

Leech  GatJierer  almost  incessantly  from  morning  till  tea-time. 

.  .  I  was  oppressed  and  sick  at  heart,  for  he  wearied  himself 

o  death.     After  tea   he  wrote  two  stanzas  in  the  manner  of 

Thomson's  Castle  of  Indolence,  and  was  tired  out."    "  William  did 

lot  sleep  till  three  o'clock."    "  William  very  nervous.     After  he 

...jtliivas  in  bed,  haunted  with  altering  The  Rainbow'^    There  is  a 

rtaiiii  frequent  recurrence  of  this  kind  of  thing.     We  feel  that  it  tends 

^g5S(  to  discredit  the  plain  living  and  high  thinking  at  Dove  Cottage, 

.jjjigli  and  that  Dorothy  took  it  too  seriously. 

^(  If  William's  moods  and  difficulties  were  a  trouble,  and 
jyjjji  sometimes  an  unreasonable  trouble,  to  Dorothy's  peace,  a 
Ujj,j  ieeper  and  more  real  trouble  came  to  her  sensitive  emotional 
jjgji  nature  through  Coleridge.  Ever  since  the  fateful  moment  in 
^ch(  '79^  when  she  had  seen  him  leap  the  fence  at  Racedown,  and 
jjjjjji,  had  wondered  at  his  talk  and  eyes,  Coleridge  had  furnished  its 
yj^j,  most  powerful  human  element  to  Dorothy's  life  and  her  brother's. 


velloi 


■.:  man' 
zi  di: 
■its 
';•",  ani 
I'm 
■.irterici 


I 


142  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

It  was  Coleridge,  we  remember,  Coleridge  at  Nether  Stowey, 
that  drew  the  Wordsworths  into  Somerset ;  and  who  could 
forget  the  trinity  that  they  made  there  ;  the  haunted  stretch  of 
road  between  Nether  Stowey  and  Alfoxden  ;  th^i  mysterious 
intellectual  commerce  between  Coleridge  and  Dorothy,  invest- 
ing some  of  the  choicest  phraseology  of  The  Ancient  Mariner 
and  Christabel  with  a  doubtful  parentage ;  who  could  forget 
the  November  walk  to  Lynton,  and  what  came  of  it  ?  Cole- 
ridge seemed  to  have  gained  no  moral  strength  from  his 
sojourn  in  Germany.  He  was  now  nearing  thirty,  but  he 
was  not  improving  in  character.  Impecuniousness,  irresolu- 
tion, desultoriness,  and  vagrancy,  concerted  demons  of  one 
injurious  brood,  had  possession  of  him  and  would  not  let  go ; 
and  his  wonderful  genius  only  quickened  their  baleful  activity. 
When  the  Wordsworths  settled  at  Grasmere,  Coleridge  had 
been  five  years  a  married  man,  and  the  second  of  his  two  sons, 
Derwent  was  born  during  their  first  summer  at  Dove  Cottage. 
Yet  the  marriage,  for  some  reason,  was  a  failure  ;  it  seemed  to  ji 
share  the  blight  which  had  fallen  on  the  Pantisocracy  scheme  ;| 
of  which  it  had  originally  formed  part.  Mrs.  Coleridge  was  theji 
mother  of  Coleridge's  children  ;  but  she  was  little  besides  to 
him.  The  dangerous  habit  of  finding  his  pleasures  and  com- 
panionships elsewhere  than  at  home  he  had  indulged  from  the 
beginning,  and  it  grew  upon  him.  We  remember  how,  like  a 
hungry-hearted  lover,  he  wrote  to  Thomas  Poole  about  his 
coming  to  Stowey.  Two  anchors,  indeed,  and  two  anchors 
only  held  the  poor  drifting  creature :  his  feeling  for  Poole,  and  u 
his  feeling  for  the  Wordsworths.  By  the  Wordsworths  he  was 
held  the  more  firmly;  and  in  the  summer  of  1800  he  settled' 
(if  any  alighting  of  his  could  be  called  settling)  at  Greta  Hall, 
Thereafter  for  many  years,  though  with  intervals  of  varyingj 
length,  he  was  constantly  with  the  Wordsworths,  delighting 
them,  grieving  them,  enriching  them,  preying  on  them.  Hej 
might  turn  up  any  stormy  night,  wet  with  the  driving  rain  onl 
the  Raise  or  on  a  shoulder  of  Helvellyn,  and  when  would  he  gcj 
away  again  ?  The  dutiful  Wordsworth  loved  him  and  lamented' 
over  him — 

"  Never  sun  on  living  creature  shone 
Who  more  devout  enjoyment  with  us  took  : 
Here  on  his  hours  he  hung  as  on  a  book, 


AMUEL   TAYLOR   COLERIDGE 

BY    WASHINGTON    AI  LSTON    IN    1814 


\ 


Dor:: 

is::: 
ten. 


k.:L' 


KC:: : 


GRASMERE  143 

On  his  own  time  here  would  he  float  away, 

As  doth  a  fly  upon  a  summer  brook  ; 

But  go  to-morrow,  or  beHke  to-day, 

Seek  for  him, — he  is  fled  ;  and  whither  none  can  say." 

"  Thus  often  would  he  leave  our  pleasant  home, 

d  why  not,  pray  ?  Had  he  not  a  home  of  his  own,  a  wife 
I  three  children,  and  quite  a  "  position,"  all  the  neighbours 
dngpaid  their  respects  at  Greta  Hall  ?] 

And  find  elsewhere  his  business  or  delight ; 

Out  of  our  Valley's  limits  did  he  roam  ; 

Full  many  a  time,  upon  a  stormy  night, 

His  voice  came  to  us  from  the  neighbouring  height : 

Oft  could  we  see  him  driving  full  in  view 

At  mid-day  when  the  sun  was  shining  bright  ; 

What  ill  was  on  him,  what  he  had  to  do, 

A  mighty  wonder  bred  among  our  quiet  crew." 

Dorothy's  Journal  is  full  of  Coleridge,  full  of  the  old  afifec- 
►nate  appreciation,  full  also  of  a  keener  pain.  If  Coleridge 
IS  not  at  Dove  Cottage,  or  the  Wordsworths  were  not  at 
■eta  Hall,  there  were  long  letters — letters  which  gave  trouble 
d  sometimes  took  away  sleep.  "  At  eleven  o'clock  Coleridge 
me  "  [this  was  August  29,  1800],  "  when  I  was  walking  in  the 
11  clear  moonshine  in  the  garden.  He  came  over  Helvellyn. 
illiam  was  gone  to  bed,  and  John  also,  worn  out  with  his  ride 
und  Coniston.  We  sate  and  chatted  till  half-past  three  .  .  , 
Dleridge  reading  a  part  of  ChristabeL  Talked  much  about  the 
ountains,  etc.,  etc."  A  few  days  later  on  the  night  of  Grasmere 
air :  "  It  was  a  lovely  moonlight  night.  The  moonlight  shone 
ily  upon  the  village.  It  did  not  eclipse  the  village  lights,  and 
le  sound  of  dancing  and  merriment  came  along  the  still  air. 
walked  with  Coleridge  and  William  up  the  lane,  and  by  the 
lurch,  and  there  lingered  with  Coleridge  in  the  garden.  John 
id  William  were  both  gone  to  bed  and  all  the  lights  out." 
aturday,  October,  4 :  "  Coleridge  came  in  while  we  were  at 
"inner,  very  wet.  We  talked  till  twelve  o'clock."  Next  morning  : 
Coleridge  read  Christabel  a  second  time  ;  we  had  increasing 
leasure.  A  delicious  morning.  .  .  .  Coleridge  and  I  walked  to 
.mbleside  after  dark."  On  some  of  these  occasions  "Sara" 
Virs.  Coleridge]   formed   one  of  the  happy  group,  and  there 


144  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

seemed  no  separate  feeling.  But  it  was  far*'  from  being  I 
happiness.  Once,  after  a  little  visit  to  Keswick,  Dorothy  wrot : 
"  Every  sight  and  every  sound  reminded  me  of  Coleridge — de.; 
dear  fellow,  of  his  many  talks  to  us,  by  day  and  by  night,  of  1 
dear  things.  I  was  melancholy,  and  could  not  talk,  but  at  1  t 
I  cured  my  heart  by  weeping.  .  .  .  O  !  how  many,  may 
reasons  have  I  to  be  anxious  for  him."  What  were  they,  ai 
why  was  Dorothy  so  distressed?  Surely  we  know  enough )f 
Coleridge  to  know  what  they  were.  Were  not  all  the  proble.s 
about  him  summed  up  in  the  question  which,  according  o 
Wordsworth,  was  constantly  put  by  the  "quiet  crew"  at  D«  e 
Cottage — 

"  What  ill  was  on  him,  what  he  had  to  do  "  ? 

W/iat  ill  ivas  on  him  ?  For  one  thing,  he  had  bad  heal . ; 
he  was  rheumatic  and  neuralgic  ;  he  sometimes  had  inflammat  n 
of  the  eyes.  His  irregular  ways,  his  long  walks  in  wind  rd 
rain,  were  not  the  best  regimen  for  such  a  case.  Did  Doro  ly 
and  her  brother  know  that  he  often  fought  pain  and  discom!rt 
with  doses  of  opium  ?  Probably  they  either  knew  or  suspect d. 
Anyhow,  they  knew  that  Sara  was  little,  and  increasingly  lite, 
to  Coleridge,  and  that  Greta  Hall  was  no  home.  That  was  lid 
enough.  Then  what  Coleridge  "had  to  do  "  ;  that  was  anotsr 
tormenting  problem.  The  second  part  of  Christabel  was  ill 
very  well ;  it  was  nearly  as  beautiful,  if  not  so  magical,  so 
entrancing,  as  the  first  part ;  but  it  left  the  poem  a  tantali2ig 
fragment,  and  what  next.'*  Nay,  even  Christabel  brought  in 
nothing;  it  was  not  published  until  i8i6,  when  Lord  Byra's 
insight  and  kindness  drew  it  from  its  obscurity.  Desultorinis, 
irresolution,  vagrancy,  reinforced  more  and  more  by  wik 
health,  opium,  and  unhappiness,  or  something  very  near  it  in 
married  life — they  were  ruining  Coleridge,  and  his  genius  ccld 
do  hardly  anything  to  stop  them.  At  thirty  what  Carlyle  ;id 
of  him  at  nearly  sixty  was  already  painfully  true  :  "  To  the  rin 
himself  Nature  had  given,  in  high  measure,  the  seeds  of  a  ncde 
endowment ;  and  to  unfold  it  had  been  forbidden  him.  A 
subtle  lynx-eyed  intellect,  tremulous  pious  sensibility  to  all 
good  and  all  beautiful  ;  truly  a  ray  of  empyrean  light ;— lut 
imbedded  in  such  weak  laxity  of  character,  in  such  indoleites 
and  esuriences  as  had  made  strange  work  with  it.  Once  mre, 
the  tragic  story  of  a  high  endowment  with  an  insufficient  wi  j' 


JGRASMERE  145 

How  could  such  a  spectacle,  going  on  under  their  eyes,  fail 
'to  grieve  the  Wordsworths  ?     How,  especially,  could  it  fail  to 
.■  harrow  Dorothy's  sensitive  soul  ?     It  is  impossible  to  read  the 
.      Grasmere  Journals  without  realizing  how  vital  was   the  com- 
gj^  "  '  panionship  between  Dorothy  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge,  and 
'  ^'''  how  mutual  was  their   sympathy.     It  was   the   most   natural 
^       ,  thing   in   the  world,  and,  of  course,  the   most   irreproachable 
»•     ^ !  thing  in  the  world.     Yet  it  was  dangerous,  perhaps  ;  dangerous 
'^'  to  Dorothy's  peace  and  to  Coleridge's ;  and  if  gossip  said  that 
Mrs.  Coleridge  was  jealous,  can  we  wonder  ? 

In  April,  1802,  Coleridge,  looking  from  Greta  Hall  at  the 
spring  sunset,  and  the  new  moon  in  a  yellow-green  west  across 
'  Derwentwater,  groaned  out  his  heart-sickness  in  his  famous 
•  :aiiiealij  Dejection  ode.  Never  did  the  devil  of  despondency  speak  in 
vjami  more  unmistakable  tones ;  yet  how  through  a  poet's  lips  the 
ill  wind  i  accent;s  come!  Here  is  still  the  incommunicable  magic  of  the 
DidDorol  Ancient  Mariner  and  of  Christahel.  He  sees  the  dim  circle 
"idiscoinl  within  the  curve  of  the  crescent  moon,  and  he  is  haunted  by  a 
:r  suspect   wild  and  ominous  stanza  from  Sir  Patrick  Spens — 


enoogl  I 
'Probb 


li'l^lylit 
frit  was 


■  brought 
,:rj  Byn 
lesultoritt 
.by 
;  oear  it, 


;  of  a  DO 


"  Well !     If  the  Bard  was  weather-wise,  who  made 
The  grand  old  ballad  of  Sir  Patrick  Spence, 


Wi  anot  This  night,  so  tranquil  now,  will  not  go  hence 

\>l  was  Unroused  by  winds,  that  ply  a  busier  trade 

Than  those  which  mould  yon  cloud  in  lazy  flakes, 
Or  the  dull  sobbing  draft,  that  moans  and  rakes 
Upon  the  strings  of  this  ^Eolian  lute 

Which  better  far  were  mute. 
For  lo !  the  New-moon  winter-bright ! 
And  overspread  with  phantom  light, 
(With  swimming  phantom-light  o'erspread 

But  rimmed  and  circled  by  a  silver  thread) 
I  see  the  old  Moon  in  her  lap,  foretelling 
^^^^^  The  coming-on  of  rain  and  squally  blast." 

"  .  I,  O  that  the  omen  might  be  fulfilled,  that  the  tempest  would 
burst :  perhaps  it  might  stir  his  stagnant  gloom !  When  was 
such  gloom  more  sternly  portrayed  ? — 

"  A  grief  without  a  pang,  void,  dark,  and  drear, 
j,,jj(.J  A  stifled,  drowsy,  unimpassioned  grief, 

'^  '  Which  finds  no  natural  outlet,  no  relief, 

In  word,  or  sigh,  or  tear." 


indolei 
Once  ID' 
■out  ffil 


Tranquil   Nature,  the  aspect  of  Nature   of  which  he  had 


146  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

sung  in  his  Nightingale  poem,  can  do  nothing  for  him.  It  is  of 
Wordsworth  that  he  thinks  as  he  looks  at  the  beauty  of  this 
western  sky,  and  it  is  to  Wordsworth  (literary  fictions  notwith- 
standing) that  he  makes  his  sad  complaint : — 

"  In  wan  and  heartless  mood 
Have  I  been  gazing  on  the  western  sky 


And  still  I  gaze — and  with  how  blank  an  eye 
And  those  thin  clouds  above,  in  flakes  and  bars, 

That  give  away  their  motion  to  the  stars  ; 
Those  stars,  that  glide  behind  them  or  between, 

Now  sparkling,  now  bedimmed,  but  always  seen  ; 
Yon  crescent  Moon,  as  fixed  as  if  it  grew 

In  its  own  cloudless,  starless  lake  of  blue  ; 
I  see  them  all  so  excellently  fair, 

I  see,  not  feel,  how  beautiful  they  are ! " 

It  is  joy  that  he  lacks,  the  joy  that  makes  beauty,  and  must 
be  within  as  well  as  without. 

"  And  I  must  think,  do  all  I  can  ^ 

That  there  was  pleasure  there," 

Wordsworth  had  written,  as  he  lounged  in  the  Alfoxden  grove 
in  springtime  ;  but  now  Coleridge  was  telling  him  that  the  sad 
heart  cannot  feel  the  pleasure —  c> 

"  I  may  not  hope  from  outward  forms  to  win 
The  passion  and  the  life,  whose  fountains  are  within." 

As  we  read  on,  we  feel  that  *'joy,"  with  its  riotous  schoolboy 
associations,  is  hardly  the  right  word  for  the  inward  heaven 
which  Coleridge  has  lost.  "  O  pure  of  heart "  he  cries  to  his 
brother  poet — 

"  O  pure  of  heart !  thou  need'st  not  ask  of  me 
What  this  strong  music  in  the  soul  may  be  ! 
What,  and  wherein  it  doth  exist, 
This  light,  this  glory,  this  fair  luminous  mist, 
This  beautiful  and  beauty-making  power.'^ 

If  we  must  call  it  joy,  it  is  at  least 

"  Joy  that  ne'er  was  given. 

Save  to  the  pure,  and  in  their  purest  hour,  H   i 

Life,  and  Life's  effluence,  cloud  at  once  and  shower.  |  . 


GRASMERE  147 

Joy  ...  is  the  spirit  and  the  power, 
Which  wedding  Nature  gives  to  us  in  dower, 
A  new  Earth  and  new  Heaven, 
Undreamt  of  by  the  sensual  and  the  proud — 
Joy  is  the  sweet  voice,  Joy  the  luminous  cloud — 

We  in  ourselves  rejoice  ! 
And  thence  flows  all  that  charms  or  ear  or  sight, 
All  melodies  the  echoes  of  that  voice, 
All  colours  a  suffusion  from  that  light." 

As  we  go  on,  we  find  that  it  is  indeed  more  than  joy,  in  any 
vulgar  sense  of  that  word,  that  he  has  lost — 

"  Afflictions  bow  me  down  to  earth  ; 
Nor  care  I  that  they  rob  me  of  my  mirth  ; 

But  oh  !  each  visitation 
Suspends  what  nature  gave  me  at  my  birth, 

My  shaping  spirit  of  Imagination." 

jdnnijl  Imagination  !     Let  us  think  what  that  word  stood  for  to  the 

two  poets  and  critics,  and  then  realize  what  it  was  for  Coleridge 
to  feel  that  it  was  growing  powerless  within  him ! 

At  last  the  prediction  of  the  lunar  omen  is  fulfilled  :  the 
wind  comes  with  its  voices,  and  makes  play  in  the  strings  of 
the   ^olian   harp.     Like  Browning  in    James  Lees    Wife^  he 

mesa^  tries  to  interpret  the  wind's  messages;  then  his  sleepless  mind 
travels  to  Dove  Cottage,  and  asks  a  blessing  for  its  inmates. 
He  prays  that  his  friend's  **joy"  may  never  fail — 

"  'Tis  midnight,  but  small  thoughts  have  I  of  sleep  : 
Full  seldom  may  my  friend  such  vigils  keep  ! 

Visit  him  [so  we  ought  to  read  it]  gentle  Sleep  !  with  wings  of  healing, 
And  may  this  storm  be  but  a  mountain-birth, 
May  all  the  stars  hang  bright  above  his  dwelling, 
Silent  as  though  they  watched  the  sleeping  Earth  ! 
With  light  heart  may  he  rise, 
Gay  fancy,  cheerful  eyes, 
Joy  lift  his  spirit,  joy  attune  his  voice  ; 
To  him  may  all  things  live,  from  pole  to  pole, 

Their  life  the  eddying  of  his  living  soul ! 
O  simple  spirit,  guided  from  above, 
Dear  William,  friend  devoutest  of  my  choice, 
Thus  mayest  thou  ever,  evermore  rejoice." 

Five  years  later,  in  another  self-pouring,  Coleridge  told 
what  the  Wordsworths  had  been  in  his  life.     He  had  just  heard 


148  WORDSAVORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

Wordsworth  read  through  The  Prelude,  dedicated  to  himself,  and 
was  moved  to  fresh  admiration — admiration  at  once  strengthened 
and  embittered  by  self-pity  and  self-contempt.  He  saw  Words- 
worth seated — 

"  In  the  choir 
Of  ever  enduring  men." 

His  song  was  immortal — 

"  Dear  shall  it  be  to  every  human  heart, 
To  me  how  more  than  dearest  !  me  on  whom 
Comfort  from  thee,  and  utterance  of  thy  love. 
Came  with  such  heights  and  depths  of  harmony, 
Such  sense  of  wings  uplifting,  that  its  might 
Scatter'd  and  quell'd  me,  till  my  thoughts  became 
A  bodily  tumult ;  and  thy  faithful  hopes, 
Thy  hopes  of  me,  dear  friend,  by  me  unfelt  I 
Were  troublous  to  me,  almost  as  a  voice, 
Famihar  once,  and  more  than  musical  ; 
As  a  dear  woman's  voice  to  one  cast  forth, 
A  wanderer  with  a  worn-out  heart  forlorn. 
Mid  strangers  pining  with  untended  wounds. 
O  Friend,  too  well  thou  know'st,  of  what  sad  years 
The  long  suppression  had  benumb'd  my  soul, 
That,  even  as  life  returns  upon  the  drown'd. 
The  unusual  joy  awoke  a  throng  of  pains — 
Keen  pangs  of  Love,  awakening,  as  a  babe 
Turbulent,  with  an  outcry  in  the  heart  ! 
And  fears  self-will'd  that  shunn'd  the  eye  of  Hope  ; 
And  Hope  that  scarce  would  know  itself  from  Fear  ; 
Sense  of  past  youth,  and  manhood  come  in  vain, 
And  genius  given,  and  knowledge,  won  in  vain, 
And  all,  which  I  had  cuU'd  in  wood-walks  wild, 
And  all  which  patient  toil  had  rear'd,  and  all 

Commune  with  Thee  had  opened  out — but  flowers  w  1    j? 

Strew'd  on  my  corse,  and  burnt  upon  my  bier,  ; 

In  the  same  coffin,  for  the  self-same  grave  ! "  ; 

■I 

He  must  break  off  this   egoistic  wailing — Byronic,  almost,  in   *  i' 

its  last  phrasing,  but  removed  from  Byronism  by  its  reality 
and  intense  sincerity — and  think  of  his  generous  friend — 

"  That  way  no  more  ! — and  ill  beseems  it  me, 
Who  came  a  welcomer,  in  herald's  guise, 
Singing  of  glory  and  futurity, 
To  wander  back  on  such  unhealthful  road 
Plucking  the  poisons  of  self-harm  !     Thou,  too,  Friend, 


GRASMERE  149 

Impair  not  thou  the  memory  of  that  hour 
Of  thy  communion  with  my  nobler  mind 
By  pity  or  grief,  already  felt  too  long  !  " 

Readers  of  The  Prelude  remember  how  the  connection  with 
Coleridge  runs  through  it  like  a  golden  thread.  With  this 
mournful  echo  of  Coleridge's  self-blame  in  our  ears,  we  ought 
to  listen  to  Wordsworth's  words,  which  are  equally  sincere. 
**  Of  thee,"  he  cries — 

"  Of  thee, 
Shall  I  be  silent  ?     O  capacious  Soul  !  " 

When  Wordsworth's  spirit  was  wounded  and  shattered,  Cole- 
ridge helped  to  comfort  and  build  it  up — 

"  Placed  on  this  earth  to  love  and  understand, 
And  from  thy  presence  shed  the  light  of  love, 
Shall  I  be  mute,  ere  thou  be  spoken  of  ? 
Thy  kindred  influence  [kindred,  he  means,  with  Dorothy's, 

of  which  he  had  been  speaking  before] 
Thy  kindred  influence  to  my  heart  of  hearts 
Did  also  find  its  way." 

Nay,  in   this  his   sincerest  moment,   he  could  speak  of  Cole- 
ridge's as  a  "  useful "  life,  and  look  forward  to  its  triumph — 

"  Oh  !  yet  a  few  short  years  of  useful  life, 
And  all  will  be  complete,  thy  race  be  run. 
Thy  monument  of  glory  will  be  raised." 

We  can  imagine  what  it  must  have  been  for  Coleridge  to 
hear  The  Prelude  read  through  from  beginning  to  end.  The 
Prelude  and  The  Excursion — in  reality,  surely,  as  well  in  their 
author's  purpose,  the  central  works  of  his  genius  and  his  life — 
are  as  truly  a  product  of  Grasmere  as  the  shorter  poems  which 
reflect  its  lighter  phases.  The  Prelude^  begun,  as  we  remember, 
at  the  end  of  the  Goslar  winter,  was  completed  at  Dove  Cottage  ; 
The  Excursion,  begun,  in  a  sense,  at  Racedown,  was  proceeded 
with  at  Dove  Cottage,  though  mainly  written  at  Allan  Bank. 
The  Grasmere  years  were  a  period,  not  of  desultory  composition, 
but  of  careful  logical  planning,  coherent  theories,  and  acute  criti- 
cism. Of  the  criticism  we  shall  hear  something  in  a  later 
chapter;  the  fruit  of  all  the  rest  was  gathered  during  the 
Grasmere  years. 

Wordsworth's  claim  to  be  a  philosophical  poet  rests,  not  on 


150  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

this  or  that  passage,  this  or  that  attitude  of  mind,  but  on  his 
ever  present,  ever  operative  sense  of  the  Universe,  of  the  whole 
of  things,  as,  in  his  judgment,  the  fitting  theme  of  poetry.  It 
was  the  Universe  that  he  meant  when  he  spoke  of  Man  of 
Nature,  and  of  Htunan  Life;  and  we  misconceive  him,  we  do 
him  injustice,  if  we  forget  this,  and  think  of  him  as  a  narrow, 
limited,  local  poet.  Yet  the  misconception  is  most  natural — 
natural  by  reason  alike  of  his  success  and  his  failure.  He  was 
limited  and  local  both  by  deliberate  design  and  by  imperfection, 
the  imperfection  that  waits  on  the  most  aspiring  genius,  the 
most  all-embracing  design. 

When  Wordsworth  locked  himself  in  the  recesses  of  Gras- 
mere,  he  meant  to  do  a  large  poetic  work  for  the  good  of  his 
fellows.  He  was  conscious,  as  he  said,  that  "  an  internal  bright- 
ness "  had  been  granted  to  him,  which  he  was  bound  to  keep 
alive ;  that  he  had  something  which  might  be  imparted  by 
power  and  effort.  In  boyhood,  and  beyond  it,  his  ambition 
had  been  the  ordinary  youthful  one — 

"to  fill 
The  heroic  trumpet  with  the  Muse's  breath  !  " 

in  other  words,  he  meditated  an  epic  of  the  traditional  character, 
a  pageant  of  heroes,  a  paraphernalia  of  battle  and  conquest, 
a  show  of  garments  rolled  in  blood.  But  when  in  his  maturity 
he  came  to  Dove  Cottage,  deliberate  self-knowledge  told  him 
to  look  elsewhere  for  immediate  subject-matter.  A  voice 
seemed  to  say — 

"  Be  mild,  and  cleave  to  gentle  things, 
Thy  glory  and  thy  happiness  be  there  !  " 

There  was  to  be  deliberate  and  systematic  limitation ;  the 
gentle  things  were  the  pastoral  places  and  folk  of  Grasmere  ; 
but  in  the  limitation  there  was  to  be  no  loss,  no  depression  of 
purpose,  no  pettiness  of  result.  There  would  still  be  the  epic 
postulates,  aspirations,  foes,  victory —  ; 

"  Bounds  to  be  leapt,  darkness  to  be  explored." 

"The  love, 
The  longing,  the  contempt,  the  undaunted  quest, 
All  shall  survive,  though  changed  their  office,  all 
Shall  live,  it  is  not  in  their  power  to  die." 

Nor  wa?  it  only  epic  grandeur  that  could  be  made  out  oi 


GRASMERE  151 

Grasmere;  but  here  also,  by  cottage  doors,  bare  hills,  and 
tumbling  brooks,  was  the  source  of  those  tremendous  abstrac- 
tions in  which  the  human  sense  of  the  Universal  expresses  itself. 
Here  came  the  '*  affecting  thoughts  "  and  "  dear  remembrances  " 
— the  "disturbance,"  as  Wordsworth  was  fond  of  calling  it — 
which  signify  that  the  mind  is  feeling  its  way  towards  "  the  glory 
of  the  sum  of  things."  Here,  among  lonely  shepherds,  were  the 
tracks 

"  Of  Truth,  of  Grandeur,  Beauty,  Love,  and  Hope, 

And  melancholy  Fear  subdued  by  Faith  ; 

Of  blessed  consolations  in  distress  ; 
;'  Of  moral  strength,  and  intellectual  Power  ; 

Of  joy  in  widest  commonalty  spread." 

Here  were  individuality,  conscience,  beauty :  here,  in  a  word, 
were  Nature  and  Human  Nature  interacting,  not  less,  but  more 
sublimely  because  the  human  beings  were  unsophisticated  by 
a  complex  civilization.  Here,  folded  in  this  limited  actual,  was 
the  boundless  ideal ;  here — 

"  A  simple  produce  of  the  common  day," 

were  Paradise,  Elysian  Groves,  Fortunate  Fields,  and  all  the 
conventional  delights  of  poesy.  It  was  to  be  this  poet's  mission 
by  simple  words,  free  from  "  poetic  diction,"  "  words — 

"  Which  speak  of  nothing  more  than  what  we  are," 

and  what  the  humblest  of  us  are,  to  win  some  of  the  highest 
triumphs  of  art ;  to 

"  Arouse  the  sensual  from  their  sleep 
Of  Death,  and  win  the  vacant  and  the  vain 
To  noble  raptures." 

So  far,  then,  we  realize  the  place  of  the  common  in  Words- 
worth's design  ;  and  so  far  we  see  nothing  debasing  to  the 
highest,  or  impoverishing  to  the  richest,  conception  of  poetry. 
Yet  again  and  again  the  reader  of  Wordsworth  feels  the  limita- 
tion as  narrowness,  the  commonness  as  triviality.  He  is  aware 
of  prejudice  and  partiality ;  of  austerity  where  there  might 
without  offence  be  more  licence  ;  of  severity  where  there  might 
be  indulgence ;  of  bareness  where  he  would  fain  see  tracery  and 
foliage.  Beautiful,  lovable,  fascinating,  as  is  that  lakeland 
from  which  he  makes  his  ascent  towards  the  Empyrean,  with 


152  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 


the  emerald  of  its  hillsides  quickened  by  abundance  of  rain,  its 
wind-swept  heaths  and  majestic  cloud-scenery,  he  longs  some- 
times for  more  glowing  heat  and  mellower  moons,  for  nightingale- 
haunted  thickets  and  a  fuller  human  pulse.  And  there  are 
moments  even  when  Wordsworth's  Universal  seems  not  wholly 
free  from  either  the  illusory  or  the  conventional ;  when  the 
reader  doubts  whether  it  is  quite  true  that  the  primrose  of  the 
rock  is  a  moral  agent,  and  is  surprised  that  a  poet  so  often 
"disturbed  by  the  joy  of  elevated  thoughts  "  should  be  also  the 
poet  of  some  of  the  Ecclesiastical  Sonnets,  and  a  contented 
supporter  of  Lord  Liverpool  and  Lord  Eldon. 

The  plan  on  which  Wordsworth  was  to  work  out  his  great  i 
results  was  a  simple  one.     He  was  to  compose  a  large  poem  ' 
called  The  Rechise,  expounding  the  sensations  and  opinions  ofjr 
a  poet  living  in  retirement.     This  poem  was  to  be  preceded  by 
an    autobiographical    poem,    The  Prelude,   showing    how    the 
"Recluse"   grew  out   of  the   child   and   the   boy.     With  thej 
exception   of  the   First    Book,   printed   in   recent   editions    of 
Wordsworth,  The  Excursion  is  all  of  The  Recluse  that  the  poet  t 
accomplished.     The  two  works  were  figured  by  Wordsworth 
himself  as  an  ante-chapel  leading  to  a  Gothic  church.     But  in 
the  design  the  smaller  poems  were  by  no  means  left  out.     They 
had  "  such  connection  with  the  main  work  as  gave  them  claim 
to  be  likened  to  the  little  cells,  oratories,  and  sepulchral  recesses, 
primarily  included  in  those  edifices." 

To  begin  with  the  ante-chapel.     The  fourteen  books  of  The%  K 
Prehtde  deal  with  Wordsworth's  development  as  a  poet  to  thejd  j^ 
stage  recorded  for  us  in  the  conclusion  of  his  Ode  on  Intimations\v  \ " 
of  Immortality,    In  the  last  book  he  portrays  the  kind  of  victory,' 
the  kind  of  power,  to  which  through  all  trials  he  had  been  led. 
He   calls   it  the  "  power  of  a  majestic  intellect "  ;  he  calls  it 
*'  love "  ;  he  calls  it  "  liberty."     He  compares  it,  as  it  masters 
the  darkness  of  things,  to  the  light  of  a  full  moon  flooding  all    c 
landscape,  such  as  he  had  once  seen  from  the  top  of  Snowdon 
after  climbing   in  the  moonless  part  of  the  night.     He  calh. 
himself  1    |l 

"  A  meditative  oft  a  suffering  man  "  ;  f    ,* 

yet  his  lofty,  and  perhaps  slightly  over-complacent,  self-respect 
is  the  dominant  note.  To  this  complacency  his  education  lee 
him  ;  and  how  he  was  led  appears  in  the  preceding  books.    The 


Jere  ars 

"■••3  k 


GRASMERE  153 

'  '^itj  iexternals,  the  mere  sources,  of  influence  were  school ;  Cambridge  ; 
"■'^^-  some  London  life ;  France  and  her  Revolution  ;  the  ministra- 
"'^aie-  jtion  of  Dorothy.     But  the  education  itself,  as  unfolded,  e.£^.  in 
Book  VIII.,  Retrospect^  was  the  great  matter.     Wordsworth's 
phrase  describes  its  essence:  Love  of  Nature  leading  to  Love  of 
Man,     He  tells  us  first  how  Nature,  as  apart  from  Man,  was  all 
in  all  to  him  ;  and  how,  as  time  went  on,  Humanity  also  became 
a  source  of  joy.     And  when  that  had  fully  happened,  the  work 
'  '"■  was  accomplished,  the  victory  won. 

The  Excursion  is  the  record,  in  unrelieved  blank  verse,  of  a 

.long  walk  made  by  Wordsworth  himself  in  his  own  neighbour- 

"'^?re^f:,hood,  in  company  with  a  humble  but  intellectual  and  religious 

^':e  iweii  man  whom  he  calls  The  Wanderer.     The  Wanderer  represents 

two  most  Words worthian  things — the  sober,  tranquil  joy  in  the 

contemplation  of  Nature  and  Man  which  the  poet  himself  had 

;  reached ;  and,  secondly,  that  unsophisticated  peasant's  view  of 

'"iii  'k  the  world  which  Wordsworth  considered  to  be  so  important  and 

i.DODS  o(  so  true.     In  the  course  of  their  walk  through  the  Lake  country, 

:  the  poet  1  the  poet  and  his  companion  discuss  the  incidents,  the  simple 

:Tijworti  and  homely  incidents,  which  they  encounter  :  the  history  of  a 

1  Botiii: ruined  cottage;  a  humble  funeral;  talks  in  Grasmere  church- 

:l  Thej  |  yard  with  the  parson  ;  the  parson  at  home  ;  sunset  on  the  lake. 

-.eniclaiii  As  the  Wanderer  stands  for  the  typical  natural  man  according 

!  recesses,;  to  Wordsworthian  ideas,  so  the  whole  poem  rests  on  the  assump- 

j  tion  that  simple  country  life  and  society  in  a  remote  but  beautiful 

.;t  of  1]%  I  neighbourhood  is  a  proper  theme  for  a  great  poem,  because  it  is 

'^\\i\  the  surface  of  profound  philosophic  depths. 

The  antithesis  in  the  early  books  between  the  Wanderer  and 

the  "  Solitary  "  is   full  of  significance.     For  the  Wanderer  is 

^  ^-,   Wordsworth,  the  early,  and  also  the  healed,  restored,  Words- 

„  ^^|i5 1  j  worth.  On  the  Wanderer,  as  on  Wordsworth,  the  spirit  of  Nature 

•    early  fell.     Like  Wordsworth,  the  Wanderer  early  found  out 

that  Nature  is  alive.     Through  the  sense  of  her  power,  he  was 

led  to  realize  the  Love  shown  forth  in  her,  and  from  vague  awe 

■■  ^ji; ;  he  went  on  to  something  very  near  worship.    Nowhere  in  Words- 

;  worth  is  the  intercourse  between  Man  and  Nature  more  fully 

I  and  characteristically  expressed  than  in  the  following  lines  : — 

"He  had  felt  the  power 
Of  Nature,  and  already  was  prepared, 


m 


-riu  j  By  his  intense  conceptions,  to  receive 


154  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

Deeply  the  lesson  deep  of  love  which  he, 
Whom  Nature,  by  whatever  means,  has  taught 
To  feel  intensely,  cannot  but  receive. 

"  Such  was  the  Boy — but  for  the  growing  Youth 
What  soul  was  his,  when,  from  the  naked  top 
Of  some  bold  headland,  he  beheld  the  sun 
Rise  up,  and  bathe  the  world  in  light !     He  looked — 
Ocean  and  earth,  the  solid  frame  of  earth 
And  ocean's  liquid  mass,  in  gladness  lay 
Beneath  him : — Far  and  wide  the  clouds  were  touched, 
And  in  their  silent  faces  could  he  read 
Unutterable  love.     Sound  needed  none, 
Nor  any  voice  of  joy  ;  his  spirit  drank 
The  spectacle  :  sensation,  soul,  and  form 
All  melted  into  him  ;  they  swallowed  up 
His  animal  being  ;  in  them  did  he  live. 
And  by  them  did  he  live  ;  they  were  his  hfe. 
In  such  access  of  mind,  in  such  high  hour 
Of  visitation  from  the  living  God, 
Thought  was  not  ;  in  enjoyment  it  expired. 
No  thanks  he  breathed,  he  proffered  no  request ; 
Rapt  into  still  communion  that  transcends 
The  imperfect  offices  of  prayer  and  praise, 
His  mind  was  a  thanksgiving  to  the  power 
That  made  him  ;  it  was  blessedness  and  love  !  " 

But  now,  on  the  other  hand,  the  sceptical,  pessimistic 
Solitary  also  is  Wordsworth,  in  the  second  stage  of  his  spiritua 
experience  ;  Wordsworth  shocked,  marred,  wounded  by  the  spec 
tacle  of  humanity  astray.  Read  Book  III.,  called  Despondency 
and  you  find  the  story  of  a  man  first  delighted,  then  disgusted 
with  the  French  Revolution,  and  left  with  no  faith  either  i: 
religion  or  in  virtue.  Read  Book  IV.,  called  Despondenc 
Corrected,  and  you  find  the  healed  and  restored  Wordswort 
arguing  with  the  marred  and  wounded  Wordsworth. 

The  two  books  called  The  Churchyard  among  tJie  Motmtain 
are  a  direct  attempt  to  make  the  graves  of  Grasmere  churchyar« 
yield  up  some  of  the  deepest  secrets  of  universal  human  nature. 

In  the  last  book,  and  especially  at  the  beginning  of  it,  w 
get  some  of  the  Wanderer's  and  Wordsworth's  philosophy  whicl 
we  could  ill  afford  to  do  without.  We  hear  of  the  Universe  a 
active,  as  alive  with  hope,  desire,  and  effort ;  we  hear  of  Mai 
apparently  the  crown  and  flower  of  the  Universe,  as  quick  wit 
divine  movement  which  unites  childhood  with  age — 


GRASMERE  155 

"  Ah  !  why  in  age 
Do  we  revert  so  fondly  to  the  walks 
Of  childhood — but  that  there  the  Soul  discerns 
The  near  memorial  footsteps  unimpaired 
Of  her  own  native  vigour  ;  thence  can  hear 
Reverberations  ;  .  .  . 

"  Do  not  think 
That  good  and  wise  ever  will  be  allowed, 
Though  strength  decay,  to  breathe  in  such  estate 
As  shall  divide  them  wholly  from  the  stir 
Of  hopeful  nature." 

Put  beside  this  two  other  Grasmere  poems,  the  sum  and 
hnax  of  Wordsworth's  poetical  achievement  there,  the  lines 
^ginning,  "  My  heart  leaps  up  when  I  behold,"  and  the  Ode  on 
itimations  of  Immortality^  and  our  image  of  Wordsworth  at  his 
reatest  is  complete. 


T' 


CHAPTER   VII 
A    SHIPWRECK 

COLERIDGE,  though  the  most  important  by  far  of  tV. 
spirits  who  sojourned   with  the   Words  worths  at  Gra,  ^- 
mere,  was  not  their  only  guest,  even  in  early  days.     Sometime 
Coleridge  brought  with   him   a  friend  of  whom  he  was  vei 
proud,  and  who  h&csimQ  persona  grata  at  Town  End — Humph 
Davy,  fast  becoming  recognized  as  the  greatest  living  chemis 
^aAQ^  born  in  1778,  was  some  years  younger  than  Wordswor 
and   Coleridge,   and   was   a   prodigy  of  scientific   genius. 
Cornishman,  he  was  educated  at  Penzance  and  Truro.     Th< 
his  bent  was  discovered  ;    and,   before  he  carried    his   tale 
on  the  inevitable  journey  of  all  talents,  to  London,  he  was, 
twenty,  made  Director  of  Dr.  Beddoes'  Pneumatic  Institution 
Bristol.     Coleridge  got   to  know   Davy  after   his  return  frol 
Germany;    and  in   1807  he  was  writing:     "I  was  much  wi 
Davey — almost   all   day."     He   thought   him  the    most  extil 
ordinary  young  man  he  had   ever  met.     Davy  used  to  go 
Greta  Hall  to  stay  with  Coleridge,  and  was,  of  course,  tak^ll 
over  the  hills  to  see  the  Wordsworths. 

Then  there  were  the  Clarksons,  husband  and  wife,  of  whc| 
the  former  was  an  impassioned  opponent  of  the  slave-trade,  a 
may  share  with  Wilberforce  the  credit  of  its  eventual  overthr 
"Clarkson!"    Wordsworth   sang  in    1807,  when    the   Bill   ]| 
Abolition  became  law — 

"  Clarkson  !  it  was  an  obstinate  hill  to  climb  : 
How  toilsome — nay,  how  dire — it  was,  by  thee 
Is  known  ;  by  none,  perhaps,  so  feelingly  : 
But  thou,  who,  starting  in  thy  fervent  prime, 
Didst  first  lead  forth  that  enterprise  sublime, 
Hast  heard  the  constant  Voice  its  charge  repeat, 
Which,  out  of  thy  young  heart's  oracular  seat, 
First  roused  thee. — Otrue  yoke-fellow  of  Time, 
156 


A   SHIPWRECK  157 

Duty's  intrepid  liegeman,  see,  the  palm 

Is  won,  and  by  all  Nations  shall  be  worn  ! 

The  blood-stained  Writing  is  for  ever  torn  ; 

And  thou  henceforth  wilt  have  a  good  man's  calm, 

A  great  man's  happiness  ;  thy  zeal  shall  find 

Repose  at  length,  firm  friend  of  human  kind  !  " 

Clarkson  had  a  farm  near  Ullswater  on  which  he  had  built 
house;  and  there  were  frequent  meetings  with  the  Words- 
)rths,  evenings  with  a  quiet  game  of  cards,  or  rides  about 
ije  misty  hills,  Clarkson  on  his  little  galloway.  Charles  Lloyd, 
lar  of  tUbleridge's  and  Lamb's  Birmingham  friend,  who  had  settled 
■j  at  Graiwn  as  a  "  Laker,"  lived  at  Brathay,  under  Loughrigg,  and  was 
>:3eti[ii!tten  at  Dove  Cottage. 

-j  In  1803,  Coleridge  took  to  the  Cottage  Sir  George  Beau- 
-...ipliitont,  of  Coleorton  in  Leicestershire,  a  descendant  of  the 
::^dieniyamatist,  and  a  painter  of  some  repute,  a  noble  and  generous 
iVordswoiljan,  if  not  a  great  artist ;  and  a  lifelong  friendship  began 
genius,  iiich  has  left  deep  marks  both  on  Wordsworth's  biography 
m.  Md  poetry.  Beaumont  was  born  in  1753,  and  was  thus  fifty 
his  taleoifien  he  made  Wordsworth's  acquaintance.  He  came  to  the 
ke was, lakes  for  their  beauty's  sake,  and  was  often  at  Grasmere 
.Station iitween  1803  and  1806.  He  loved  both  Coleridge  and  Words- 
rttiirn  fro  orth,  and  was  eager  to  promote  their  friendship  and  mutual 
mbwililpfulness.  With  these  things  in  view,  he  bought  a  small 
-ostextrtate  at  Applethwaite,  near  Greta  Hall,  on  which  he  wished 
si  to  go  e  Wordsworths  to  live.  Though  they  never  did  so,  Words- 
oiirse,takforth  kept  the  estate,  making  it  over  to  his  daughter  Dora. 

The  friendship  with  this  gracious,  wealthy,  and  gifted  man 

id  his  like-minded  wife  was  one  of  Wordsworth's  best  posses- 

^yeaions.     Coleorton,  four  miles  south-east  of  Ashby-de-la-Zouche, 

overthrows  a  pleasant  resort  of  men  of  letters  and  artists.     In  1806 

^  gill  lid  1807  Beaumont  was  building  a  new  house  and  laying  out 

w  grounds.     He   occupied  a  farmhouse  on  the   estate,  and 

lis  house  he  lent  to  the  Wordsworths  in  the  winter  of  1806-7, 

leir  family  having  increased  beyond  the  possibilities  of  com- 

rtable  housing  at  Dove  Cottage.     Wordsworth  was  an  adept 

:  landscape-gardening ;  and  at  Coleorton  he  not  only  walked 

p  and  down  composing  poetry  as  usual,  but  gave  advice  as 

)  walks,  summer-houses,  and   the   like.     He  wrote   to  Lady 

eaumont  of  the  spring-days  of  1807 — 


ifiofwho 


158  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

"  Lady  !  the  sonj,s  of  spring  were  in  the  grove 
While  I  was  shaping  beds  for  winter  flowers, 
While  I  was  planting  green  unfading  bowers, 
And  shrubs  to  hang  upon  the  warm  alcove,  jj 

And  sheltering  wall ;  and  still,  as  fancy  wove  |j 

The  dream,  to  time  and  nature's  blended  powers  ' 

I  gain  this  paradise  for  winter  hours, 
A  labyrinth,  lady  !  which  your  feet  shall  rove. 
Yes  !  when  the  sun  of  life  more  feebly  shines, 
Becoming  thoughts,  I  trust,  of  solemn  gloom 
Or  of  high  gladness  you  shall  hither  bring  ; 
And  these  perennial  bowers  and  murmuring  pines 
Be  gracious  as  the  music  and  the  bloom 
And  all  the  mighty  ravishment  of  spring." 

Beaumont  lived  till  1827.  He  was  not  a  great  painter,  bi 
he  was  a  great  patron  of  art,  for  from  his  collection  and  h 
generosity  sprang  the  National  Gallery. 

But  of  all  the  guests,  the  dearest  and  the  most  sacred  w; 
the  earliest,  the  sailor-brother  John,  who  first  walked  over  in' 
Grasmere  with  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge,  and  who  stayed  wii 
William  and  Dorothy  at  Dove  Cottage  until  he  had  to  go 
join  his  ship  on  September  29,  1800.  Those  nine  months- 
"  eight  blessed  months,"  his  brother  afterwards  called  them- 
were  long  enough  to  make  him  a  permanent  feature  of  the  ne 
life  ;  they  were  long  enough  to  endear  Grasmere  to  one  wh 
albeit  a  brave  and  competent  sailor,  had  a  poet's  sensibility  ar 
a  poet's  heart.  Dorothy's  Journal  tells  a  good  deal  of  Johr 
share  in  the  happy  summer  life,  of  the  walkings  and  bathini 
and  fishings  that  went  on.  It  tells  also  of  the  moment  of  partii 
"  in  sight  of  UUswater  "  :  "  John  left  us  ...  It  was  a  fine  da 
showery,  but  with  sunshine  and  fine  clouds.  Poor  fellow,  n 
heart  was  right  sad  !  I  could  not  help  thinking  we  should  s 
him  again,  because  he  was  only  going  to  Penrith." 

When  John  was  alone,  he  specially  cared  to  walk  in  a  fi 
plantation  behind  and  above  the  Cottage—that  fir-plantati( 
towards  White-moss  which  all  three  liked  so  well.  After  1 
was  gone  the  others  realized  how  much  he  had  paced  the 
alone,  when  the  wind  teased  beyond  the  shelter ;  they  found 
path,  a  quarter-deck  path,  which  could  have  been  worn  by  nor 
other  than  his  sailor's  feet.  Now  that  he  had  gone  back  to  tl 
ocean,  that  silent  track  seemed  eloquent  of  him  and  consecrate 
to  his  memory ;  reminiscence  was  bringing  affection  within  sig 


1 


A   SHIPWRECK  159 

of  the  limits  of  passion.  Emotion  was  not  only  "  recollected," 
but  born  "  in  tranquillity  "  ;  imagination  and  idealization  were 
at  work.  While  the  brothers  were  living  together,  they  were 
affectionate  brothers,  but  no  more ;  when  one  was  gone  his 
image  came  "  more  moving-delicate  and  full  of  life "  than 
when  they  were  under  the  same  roof.  In  the  fir-wood — hence- 
forward "  John's  Grove  " — William  began  to  realize  his  brother 
in  idealizing  him.  He  seemed  the  poet,  though  inarticulate ; 
the  man  of  finer  sensibility. 

"  In  the  shady  grove 
Pleasant  conviction  flashed  upon  my  mind 
That,  to  this  opportune  recess  allured. 
He  had  surveyed  it  with  a  finer  eye, 
A  heart  more  wakeful  ;  and  had  worn  the  track 
By  pacing  here,  unwearied  and  alone. 
In  that  habitual  restlessness  of  foot 
That  haunts  the  Sailor  measuring  o'er  and  o'er 
His  short  domain  upon  the  vessel's  deck. 


fithiD 


When  thou  had'st  quitted  Esthwaite's  pleasant  shore 

Year  followed  year,  my  Brother  !  and  we  two 

Conversing  not,  knew  little  in  what  mould 

Each  other's  mind  was  fashioned  ;  and  at  length, 

When  once  again  we  met  in  Grasmere  Vale, 

Between  us  there  was  little  other  bond 

Than  common  feelings  of  fraternal  love. 

But  thou,  a  Schoolboy,  to  the  sea  hadst  carried 

Undying  recollections  !     Nature  there 

Was  with  thee  ;  she,  who  loved  us  both,  she  still 

Was  with  thee  ;  and  even  so  didst  thou  become 

A  silent  Poet ;  from  the  solitude 

Of  the  vast  sea  didst  bring  a  watchful  heart 

Still  couchant,  an  inevitable  ear, 

And  an  eye  practis'd  like  a  blind  man's  touch. 

Back  to  the  joyless  Ocean  thou  art  gone ; 

Nor  from  this  vestige  of  thy  musing  hours 

Could  I  withhold  thy  honour'd  name, — and  now 

I  love  the  fir-grove  with  a  perfect  love." 

A  wireless  telegraphy  of  love  seemed  to  play  between  the 
fir-grove  and  the  ship  at  sea. 

♦'  While  I  gaze  .  .  . 

I  think  on  thee 
My  Brother,  and  on  all  which  thou  hast  lost. 


160  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

Nor  seldom,  if  I  lightly  guess,  while  Thou, 
Muttering  the  verses  which  I  muttered  first 
Among  the  mountains,  through  the  midnight  watch 
Art  pacing  thoughtfully  the  vessel's  deck 
In  some  far  region,  here,  while  o'er  my  head, 
At  every  impulse  of  the  moving  breeze, 
The  fir-grove  murmurs  with  a  sea-like  sound, 
Alone  I  tread  this  path  ; — for  aught  I  know, 
Timing  my  steps  to  thine  :  and  with  a  store 
Of  undistinguishable  sympathies, 
Mingling  most  earnest  wishes  for  the  day 
When  we,  and  others  whom  we  love,  shall  meet 
A  second  time,  in  Grasmere's  happy  Vale." 

These  earnest  wishes  were  for  something  more  than  a  mere 
brief  sailor's  visit.  It  was  John's  purpose  to  leave  the  sea  as  | 
soon  as  he  had  made  a  competence,  to  bid  it  farewell,  and  to 
settle  at  Grasmere,  adding  his  means  to  the  slender  capital  of 
William  and  Dorothy.  Meanwhile,  after  the  parting  on  > 
Michaelmas  Day,  1800,  his  sea  life  ran  smoothly.  He  joined 
the  Earl  of  Abergaveujiy,  East  Indiaman — ''The  finest  ship 
in  the  fleet,"  he  wrote  to  his  sister  ;  but  much  of  his  heart  was 
left  at  Grasmere.  Just  before  he  sailed  in  the  spring  of  1801, 
Wordsworth  brought  out  the  second  edition  of  Lyrical  Ballads. 
In  this,  and  in  his  brother's  poetry  in  general,  John  was  deeply 
interested  ;  he  was  sensitive  to  its  unpopularity,  and  confident 
of  its  essential  merit  and  ultimate  success.  "  Few  people,"  he 
wrote,  "  read  poetry  ;  they  buy  it  for  the  name,  read  about 
twenty  lines,  and  if  the  language  is  very  fine,  they  are  content 
with  praising  the  whole.  Most  of  William's  poetry  hnproves 
upon  the  second,  third,  or  fourth  reading.  Now,  people  in  general 
are  not  sufficiently  interested  to  try  a  second  reading."  And 
again,  "  The  poems  will  become  popular  in  time,  but  it  will  be 
by  degrees^  "  My  brother's  poetry  has  a  great  deal  to  struggle 
against  ;  but  I  hope  it  will  overcome  all :  it  is  certain ly/^?/;2^(^^ 
ttpon  Nature,  and  that  is  the  best  foimdationy  And  finally, 
"  I  do  not  give  myself  the  smallest  concern  about  them  {^Lyrical 
Ballads'].     I  am  certain  they  must  sell." 

Between  1801  and  1804  the  Earl  of  Abergavenny  made 
two  successful  voyages  to  the  far  East,  and  before  a  third  was 
entered  on  John  Wordsworth  was  put  in  command  of  her. 
William  saw  him  once  in  London,  but  there  was  never  time  for 


r::^ 


r : 


ElL 


It::  *: 
be 


'Cl: 


A  SHIPWRECK  161 

John  to  go  to  Westmorland.  On  one  early  day  in  February, 
the  Abergavenny  left  Portsmouth  on  what  the  brothers  hoped 
would  have  been  John's  last  voyage.  It  was ;  but  not  as  they 
hoped.  On  the  way  down  Channel  an  unskilful  pilot  was  on 
board ;  and  in  the  afternoon  of  February  5  the  ship  went 
aground  off  Portland  Bill.  In  a  few  hours  she  was  a  total 
wreck,  the  greater  part  of  the  crew  being  drowned,  and  Captain 
Wordsworth  going  down  "  with  apparent  cheerfulness,"  "  in  the 
very  place  and  point  where  his  duty  stationed  him." 

In  the  dark  February  days  the  burden  of  these  heavy 
tidings  fell  on  the  little  household  at  Grasmere.  There  is  a 
soul  of  goodness  in  things  evil ;  and  the  Wordsworths'  loss  was 
the  world's  gain.  For  this  tragedy  drew  from  Wordsworth,  not 
only  two  or  three  of  his  most  beautiful  poems,  but  a  note  of 
passion  deeper  and  more  thrilling  than  that  evoked  by  any- 
thing else  in  his  life — even  marriage,  even  his  love  for  Dorothy. 
The  passion  is  felt,  not  only  in  the  verse,  but  in  the  intensity  of 
the  mourning,  which  gives  a  passing  eloquence  to  his  frigid  and 
sapless  epistolary  style.  In  that  year  1805,  when  the  blow 
came,  Wordsworth  was  in  the  most  perfect  maturity  of  his 
genius.  He  had  finished  The  Prelude^  he  had  finished  the 
Immortality  Ode ;  it  was  the  year  of  the  Ode  to  DtUy^  of  The 
Waggoner ;  he  had  just  completed  some  of  his  most  beautiful 
Grasmere  work,  and  his  first  series  of  great  sonnets.  The 
feeling  of  a  great  poet  at  the  height  of  his  powers  was  stirred 
to  its  deepest  depths ;  imagination  kindled  every  spark  of 
reminiscence  into  a  glowing  flame. 

Dorothy  wrote  to  a  friend —  "  It  does  me  good  to  weep  for 

^f^[^  jiim.  .  .  .  My  consolations  come  to  me  ...  in  gusts  of  feei- 
ng. ...  I  know  it  will  not  always  be  so.     The  time  will  come 
-vhen  the  light  of  the  setting  sun  upon  these  mountain-tops 

ostnigs*  yjii  Ijg  ^g  heretofore,  a  pure  joy;  not  the  sa,me  gladness — that 
:an  never  be — but  yet  a  joy  even  more  tender.  .  .  .  Pure  he 
vas,  and  innocent  as  a  child.  .  .  .  The  stars  and  moon  were 
us  chief  delight.  He  made  of  them  his  companions  when  he 
/as  at  sea,  and  was  never  tired  of  those  thoughts  which  the 
'ilence  of  the  night  fed  in  him."  "My  poor  sister,"  Words- 
vorth  wrote  to  Sir  George  Beaumont,  "  and  my  wife,  who  loved 
lim  almost  as  we  did  .  .  .  are  in  miserable  affliction,  which 
do  all  in  my  power  to  alleviate ;  but  Heaven  knows  I  want 

I  M 


':  iea  as 

dtc 

•::::a!  d 

01 

]o:nd 

t  shij 

-^rt  wa 

iSoi 

'M 

li  :eeplj 

c:nndei] 

ii  aboii 

;  CODteS 


162  WORDSWORTH   AND  HIS   CIRCLE 

consolation  myself.  ...  I  can  say  nothing  higher  of  my  ever- 
dear  brother,  than  that  he  was  worthy  of  his  sister,  who  is  now 
weeping  beside  me,  and  of  the  friendship  of  Coleridge ;  meek, 
affectionate,  silently  enthusiastic,  loving  all  quiet  things,  and  a 
poet  in  everything  but  words." 

"  I  shall  never  forget  him,"  he  wrote,  some  days  later,  "  never 
lose  sight  of  him.  There  is  a  bond  between  us  yet,  the  same  as 
if  he  were  living,  nay,  far  more  sacred,  calling  upon  me  to  do 
my  utmost,  as  he  to  the  last  did  his  utmost,  to  live  in  honour 
and  worthiness.  .  .  .  Do  not  think  our  grief  unreasonable.  Of 
all  human  beings  whom  I  ever  knew,  he  was  the  man  of  the 
most  rational  desires,  the  most  sedate  habits,  and  the  most 
perfect  self-command.  He  was  modest  and  gentle,  and  shy 
even  to  disease  ;  but  this  was  wearing  off.  In  everything  his 
judgments  were  sound  and  original  ;  his  taste  in  all  the  arts, 
music  and  poetry  in  particular  .  .  .  was  exquisite ;  and  his  eye 
for  the  beauties  of  Nature  was  as  fine  and  delicate  as  ever  poet 
or  painter  was  gifted  with,  in  some  discriminations,  owing  to  his 
education  and  way  of  life,  far  superior  to  any  person's  I  ever 
knew.  But  alas !  what  avails  it  ?  It  was  the  will  of  God  that 
he  should  be  taken  away.  ...  A  thousand  times  have  I  asked 
myself  .  .  .  why  was  he  taken  away?  .  .  .  Why  have  we  a 
choice  and  a  will,  and  a  notion  of  justice  and  injustice  enabling 
us  to  be  moral  agents  ?  Why  have  we  sympathies  that  make 
the  best  of  us  so  afraid  of  inflicting  pain  and  sorrow,  which  yet 
we  see  dealt  about  so  lavishly  by  the  supreme  Governor  ?  .  .  . 
Would  it  not  be  blasphemy  to  say  that,  upon  the  supposition  of 
the  thinking  principle  being  destroyed  by  death,  however  inferior 
we  may  be  to  the  great  Cause  and  Ruler  of  things,  we  have 
more  of  love  in  our  nature  than  He  has?  ...  As  to  my  departed 
brother,  who  leads  our  minds  at  present  to  these  reflections,  he 
walked  all  his  life  pure  among  many  impure.  .  .  .  In  prudence, 
in  meekness,  in  self-denial,  in  fortitude,  in  just  desires  and 
elegant  and  refined  enjoyments,  with  an  entire  simplicity  of 
manners,  life,  and  habit,  he  was  all  that  could  be  wished  for  in 
man  ;  strong  in  health,  and  of  a  noble  person,  with  every  hope 
about  him  that  could  render  life  dear,  thinking  of,  and  living 
only  for,  others — and  we  see  what  has  been  his  end  !  So  good 
must  be  better  ;  so  high  must  be  destined  to  be  higher." 

Two   more   sentences,   and   we   may   take   leave   of    these 


^':^ 


Ills 


feVLt 


ever, 
^now 

mee 
and 

neve: 

to  do 
•onoui 
e.  01 
iik 
most 
;:  shy 

le  art^ 

::  poe! 

;  eva 
:  thai 

ik\ 

;ve 

■iblinj 
:inal!' 

a  J 


laon 

inferii 

i-e  hai 

eparti 

ions,l 

udeDC 

res  an 

:icity 

:ior 

.  J'- 


A  SHIPWRECK  163 

elegiacs  in  prose.  "  For  myself,"  he  wrote,  more  than  a  month 
after  the  catastrophe,  "  I  feel  that  there  is  something  cut  out  of 
my  life  that  cannot  be  restored.  .  .  .  But  let  me  stop !  I  will 
not  be  cast  down ;  were  it  only  for  his  sake,  I  will  not  be 
dejected.  I  have  much  yet  to  do,  and  pray  God  to  give  me 
strength  and  power :  his  [John's]  part  of  the  agreement  between 
us  is  brought  to  an  end,  mine  continues ;  and  I  hope,  when  I 
shall  be  able  to  think  of  him  with  a  calmer  mind,  that  the 
remembrance  of  him  dead  will  even  animate  me  more  than  the 
joy  which  I  had  in  him  living." 

The  poetry  born  of  the  tragedy  is  as  various  as  it  is 
beautiful.  First  of  all,  memory  went  back  to  the  parting  on 
Michaelmas  Day,  1800,  the  parting  "in  sight  of  UUswater" 
commemorated  in  Dorothy's  Journal.  The  exact  spot  was  near 
Grisdale  Tarn,  out  of  which  the  Grisdale  stream  flows  down 
north-eastward  to  Patterdale  and  UUswater  among  the  wild 
hills  between  Fairfield  and  Helvellyn.  The  ground  is  high 
enough  to  be  covered  with  the  bright  green  leaves  and  pink 
and  white  flowers  of  Silene  acaulis,  the  moss  campion.  Full  of 
his  sorrow,  Wordsworth  went  back  to  the  place  while  the  plant 
was  in  flower.  At  a  shepherd's  whistle,  a  buzzard  sailed  into 
the  air ;  "  could  it  but  have  lent  its  wings,"  he  thought  pas- 
sionately, "  to  save  those  sailors ! "  Then  from  the  bird  with 
its  strong  and  free  flight,  he  turned  to  the  earth-clinging  plant,^ 
and  found  in  it  a  type  of  the  calmness  he  needed.  His  mind 
travelled  back  over  the  five  years — 


"  Here  did  we  stop;  and  here  looked  round 
While  each  into  himself  descends 
For  that  last  thought  of  parting  Friends 
That  is  not  to  be  found. 
Hidden  was  Grasmere  Vale  from  sight, 
Our  home  and  his,  his  heart's  delight, 
His  quiet  heart's  selected  home. 
But  time  before  him  melts  away, 
And  he  hath  feeling  of  a  day 
Of  blessedness  to  come." 

The  next  thought  was  of  the  shock  of  the  bad  news — 

"  Full  soon  in  sorrow  did  I  weep, 
Taught  that  the  mutual  hope  was  dust, 
In  sorrow,  but  for  higher  trust, 
How  miserably  deep  ! 


164  WORDSWORTH    AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

All  vanished  in  a  single  word, 

A  breath,  a  sound,  and  scarcely  heard  ; 

Sea — Ship — drowned — Shipwreck — so  it  came, 

The  meek,  the  brave,  the  good,  was  gone  ; 

He  who  had  been  our  living  John 

Was  nothing  but  a  name." 

Well,  and  what  comes  out  of  it  all  ?     Only  the  kind  of  con- 
solation, so  sober  and  so  reasonable,  which  Wordsworth  alone  - 
has  made  known  to  us — the  kind  of  consolation  which  Shelley,  i 
too,  felt  when  he  spoke  of  Adonais  as  "  made  one  with  Nature." 
The  very  plant  at  his  feet,  humble,  beautiful,  calm^  comforts  ] 
him — 

"  From  many  a  humble  source,  to  pains 

Like  these,  there  comes  a  mild  release  ; 

Even  here  I  feel  it,  even  this  Plant 

Is  in  its  beauty  ministrant 

To  comfort  and  to  peace. 

"  He  would  have  loved  thy  modest  grace, 
Meek  Flower  !  " 

Such  "blessed  consolations  in  distress"  cannot  be  ex- 
plained, cannot  be  even  justified,  to  a  carping  and  sneering 
scepticism.  It  is  enough  that  they  may  be  felt  by  those  who 
are  pure  enough  and  serene  enough  to  feel  them. 

With  his  beloved  daisy,  too,  he  must  needs  link  the  thought 
of  his  sorrow,  the  very  narrative  of  his  loss. 

If  John  would  have  loved  the  moss  campion,  he  had  loved 
the  daisy.  And  now  the  daisies  grow  on  his  grave  at  Wyke 
Regis ! — 

"  He  who  was  on  land,  at  sea, 
My  Brother,  too,  in  loving  thee, 
Although  he  loved  more  silently, 
Sleeps  by  his  native  shore." 

The  successful  cruises  were  made  ;  in  the  intervals  the  sailor 
rejoiced  in  English  grass  and  flowers — 

"  But,  when  a  third  time  from  the  land 
They  parted,  sorrow  was  at  hand 
For  Him  and  for  his  crew. 


"  Six  weeks  beneath  the  moving  sea 
He  lay  in  slumbe   quietly  ; 
Unforced  by  wind  or  wave 


te:: 


beei- 


A   SHIPWRECK  165 

To  quit  the  Ship  for  which  he  died, 
(All  claims  of  duty  satisfied  ;) 
And  there  they  found  him  at  her  side  ; 
And  bore  him  to  the  grave. 

"  Vain  service  !  yet  not  vainly  done 
For  this,  if  other  end  were  none 
That  He,  who  had  been  cast 
Upon  a  way  of  life  unmeet 
For  such  a  gentle  soul  and  sweet, 
Should  find  an  undisturbed  retreat 
Near  what  he  loved,  at  last — 

"  That  neighbourhood  of  grove  and  field 
To  Him  a  resting-place  should  yield, 
A  meek  man  and  a  brave  ! 
The  birds  shall  sing  and  ocean  make 
A  mournful  murmur  for  his  sake  ; 
And  Thou,  sweet  Flower,  shalt  sleep  and  wake, 
Upon  his  senseless  grave." 

A  yet  deeper  note  was  struck  out  of  association  with  one  of 
Sir  George  Beaumont's  pictures.  It  was  of  Peel  Castle  in  the 
meerinllsle  of  Man,  painted  as  in  a  storm.  Wordsworth,  as  a  boy,  had 
^  win  spent  a  summer  month  close  to  the  castle,  but  had  seen  it  only 
in  calm  weather.  Looking  at  the  turbulent  picture,  and  con- 
thougl  trasting  it  with  his  own  recollections,  he,  after  his  fashion, 
extends  and  moralizes  the  contrast.  It  was  a  contrast  never 
lilova  far  from  his  central  thought,  the  contrast  between  the  un- 
tWyk| thinking,  non-human  estimate  of  life  and  Nature  on  the  one 
hand,  and  the  reflective  estimate  on  the  other,  made  when  the 
worst  of  human  ill  has  been  faced.  It  was  present  to  him  in 
the  grove  at  Alfoxden  ;  at  Tintern  Abbey  ;  it  is  the  under-note 
Df  all  The  Prelude.  The  picture  of  Peel  Castle  in  a  storm 
orings  it  sharply  out.  The  death  of  John  Wordsworth,  in  cir- 
■:umstances  so  tragic — the  first  keen  personal  grief  in  William's 
[experience — was  fresh  "sad  music  of  humanity,"  only  this  time 
jiot  "still,"  but  shrill  and  keen,  "wild  with  all  regret."  It 
jnade  an  epoch ;  never  again  could  the  poet  be  what  he  was 
!)efore.  Yet  in  his  poem  he  is  hardly  egoistic ;  the  poem  is  one 
i)f  art  rather  than  of  ethics  or  autobiography.  For  art's  sake 
brimarily,  he  is  thankful  that  the  impression  of  his  childhood, 
inade   more  vivid  by  illusion — "the  light   that  never  was   on 


iesaau 


166  WORDSWORTH    AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

imposed  on  the  world  as  final  symbolic  truth.  "  A  sea  that  coulc 
not  cease  to  smile,"  "a  sky  of  bliss" — how  partial  a  truth,  how 
inadequate  to  the  deepest  fact,  the  deepest  beauty,  of  things 
Yet  had  Wordsworth  himself  been  the  painter  before  his 
sorrows,  before  this  last  sorrow,  he  would  have  uttered  thij 
lying  half-truth — 

"Thou  shouldst  have  seemed  a  treasure-house  divine 
Of  peaceful  years  ;  a  chronicle  of  heaven  ; — 
Of  all  the  sunbeams  that  did  ever  shine 
The  very  sweetest  had  to  thee  been  given. 

"A  Picture  had  it  been  of  lasting  ease, 
Elysian  quiet,  without  toil  or  strife  ; 
No  motion  but  the  moving  tide,  a  breeze. 
Or  merely  silent  Nature's  breathing  life." 

But  the  actual  painter's  hand  has  been  guided  to  the  true 
picture.  The  poet  hails  the  symbolism  with  passionate 
acclamation — 

"  This  work  of  thine  I  blame  not,  but  commend  ; 
This  sea  in  anger,  and  that  dismal  shore." 

As  the  moss  campion,  carpeting  the  heights  by  Grisdah 
Tarn  had  been  to  the  bereaved  man  a  type  of  restored  calm 
the  castle  was  a  type  of  the  indefeasible,  the  impregnable  b> 
adversity,  by  "  the  fierce  confederate  storm  of  sorrow  " — 

"  And  this  huge  Castle,  standing  here  sublime, 
I  love  to  see  the  look  with  which  it  braves, 
Cased  in  the  unfeeling  armour  of  old  time, 
The  lightning,  the  fierce  wind,  and  trampling  waves." 

Yet  the  note  on  which  the  poem  dies  away  is  far  from  being 
one  of  stoical  defiance.  It  is  not  because  the  picture  show.' 
mere  unflinching  resistance  to  the  blows  of  fate  that  it  is  sc 
much  to  Wordsworth.  It  is  because  it  shows  what  Humanit} 
adds  to  Nature,  and  how  from  the  utmost  human  pain  there  u 
release. 

"  Welcome  each  rebuff 
That  turns  earth's  smoothness  rough  ! " 

was  Browning's  cheery,  brusque  exclamation.  Wordsworth's  'u 
deeper  and  more  passionate,  if  more  restrained  ;  and,  though 
apparently  at  war  with  optimism,  not  less  alive  with  faith — 


A   SHIPWRECK  167 

*'  Farewell,  farewell  the  heart  that  lives  alone, 
Housed  in  a  dream,  at  distance  from  the  Kind  ! 
Such  happiness,  wherever  it  be  known, 
Is  to  be  pitied  ;  for  'tis  surely  blind. 

"  But  welcome  fortitude,  and  patient  cheer, 
And  frequent  sights  of  what  is  to  be  borne  ! 
Such  sights,  or  worse,  as  are  before  me  here. — 
Not  without  hope  we  suffer  and  we  mourn." 

In  October,  1805,  Nelson  died  at  Trafalgar;  and  in  the 
next  year  Wordsworth  was  moved  to  put  something  of  his 
character  into  verse.  The  conception  of  "  a  happy  warrior,"  of 
a  fighting  man  who  might  yet  realize  himself  at  his  best,  and 
be  a  kind  of  philosopher  or  saint  in  armour,  filled  the  poet's 
mind  and  occupied  his  imagination.  But  though,  as  he  reflected 
and  imagined,  he  thought  much  of  Nelson,  he  thought  more  of 
his  brother  John.  Nelson's  private  life  was  too  much  blurred 
for  a  poet  like  Wordsworth  to  idealize  the  man  completely. 
The  philosopher  in  action  was  more  nearly  realized  by  John, 
who  had  a  warrior's  heart,  and  would  fain  have  fought  his 
country's  battles.  And  so,  thinking  mainly  of  his  brother,  the 
poet  puts  his  great  question — 

"  Who  is  the  happy  Warrior  ?    Who  is  he 
That  every  man  in  arms  should  wish  to  be  ? " 

and  proceeds  to  answer  it  so  nobly,  so  sonorously,  and  with  such 
unity  and  close  sequence  of  thought,  that  one  must  quote  the 
whole — 

"  It  is  the  generous  spirit,  who,  when  brought 
Among  the  tasks  of  real  life,  hath  wrought 
Upon  the  plan  that  pleased  his  boyish  thought  : 
Whose  high  endeavours  are  an  inward  light 
That  makes  the  path  before  him  always  bright : 
Who,  with  a  natural  instinct  to  discern 
What  knowledge  can  perform,  is  diligent  to  learn ; 
Abides  by  this  resolve,  and  stops  not  there, 
But  makes  his  moral  being  his  prime  care ; 
Who,  doomed  to  go  in  company  with  Pain, 
And  Fear,  and  Bloodshed,  miserable  train  ! 
Turns  his  necessity  to  glorious  gain  ; 
In  face  of  these  doth  exercise  a  power 
Which  is  our  human  nature's  highest  dower ; 


168  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

Controls  them,  and  subdues,  transmutes,  bereaves 

Of  their  bad  influence,  and  their  good  receives  : 

By  objects,  which  might  force  the  soul  to  abate 

Her  feeling,  rendered  more  compassionate  ; 

Is  placable — because  occasions  rise 

So  often  that  demand  such  sacrifice  ; 

More  skilful  in  self-knowledge,  even  more  pure, 

As  tempted  more  ;  more  able  to  endure, 

As  more  exposed  to  suffering  and  distress  ; 

Thence,  also,  more  alive  to  tenderness. 

— 'Tis  he  whose  law  is  reason  ;  who  depends 

Upon  that  law  as  on  the  best  of  friends  ; 

Whence,  in  a  state  where  men  are  tempted  still 

To  evil  for  a  guard  against  worse  ill, 

And  what  in  quality  or  act  is  best 

Doth  seldom  on  a  right  foundation  rest, 

He  labours  good  on  good  to  fix,  and  owes 

To  virtue  every  triumph  that  he  knows  : 

— Who,  if  he  rise  to  station  of  command, 

Rises  by  open  means ;  and  there  will  stand 

On  honourable  terms,  or  else  retire, 

And  in  himself  possess  his  own  desire; 

Who  comprehends  his  trust,  and  to  the  same 

Keeps  faithful  with  a  singleness  of  aim ; 

And  therefore  does  not  stoop,  nor  lie  in  wait 

For  wealth,  or  honours,  or  for  worldly  state  ; 

Whom  they  must  follow ;  on  whose  head  must  fall, 

Like  showers  of  manna,  if  they  come  at  all : 

Whose  powers  shed  round  him  in  the  common  strife, 

Or  mild  concerns  of  ordinary  life, 

A  constant  influence,  a  peculiar  grace; 

But  who,  if  he  be  called  upon  to  face 

Some  awful  moment  to  which  Heaven  has  joined 

Great  issues,  good  or  bad  for  human  kind, 

Is  happy  as  a  Lover ;  and  attired 

With  sudden  brightness,  like  a  Man  inspired ; 

And,  through  the  heat  of  conflict,  keeps  the  law 

In  calmness  made,  and  sees  what  he  foresaw ; 

Or  if  an  unexpected  call  succeed, 

Come  when  it  will,  is  equal  to  the  need  : 

— He  who,  though  thus  endued  as  with  a  sense 

And  faculty  for  storm  and  turbulence, 

Is  yet  a  soul  whose  master-bias  leans 

To  home-felt  pleasures  and  to  gentle  scenes ; 

Sweet  images  !  which,  wheresoe'er  he  be, 

Are  at  his  heart ;  and  such  fidelity 

It  is  his  darling  passion  to  approve  ; 

More  brave  for  this,  that  he  hath  much  to  love  ! — 


A   SHIPWRECK  169 

Tis,  finally,  the  Man,  who,  lifted  high, 
Conspicuous  object  in  a  Nation's  eye, 
Or  left  unthought-of  in  obscurity, — 
Who,  with  a  toward  or  untoward  lot, 
Prosperous  or  adverse,  to  his  wish  or  not, — 
Plays,  in  the  many  games  of  life,  that  one 
Where  what  he  most  doth  value  may  be  won  : 
Whom  neither  shape  of  danger  can  dismay, 
Nor  thought  of  tender  happiness  betray  ; 
Who,  not  content  that  former  worth  stand  fast, 
Looks  forward,  persevering  to  the  last, 
From  well  to  better,  daily  self-surpast : 
Who,  whether  praise  of  him  must  walk  the  earth 
For  ever,  and  to  noble  deeds  give  birth, 
Or  he  must  fall,  to  sleep  without  his  fame, 
And  leave  a  dead  unprofitable  name, — 
Finds  comfort  in  himself,  and  in  his  cause  ; 
And,  while  the  mortal  mist  is  gathering,  draws 
His  breath  in  confidence  of  Heaven's  applause  : 
This  is  the  happy  Warrior  ;  this  is  He 
That  every  Man  in  arms  should  wish  to  be." 


m 


CHAPTER  VIII 
THE  POET  AS  CRITIC  AND  POLITICIAN 

IT  was  to  Dove  Cottage  that  Wordsworth  brought  his  wife, 
Mary  Hutchinson,  in  October,  1802.  We  remember  how 
William  and  Dorothy  went  over  into  Yorkshire  to  fetch  her,  and 
the  Farewell  to  beloved  Grasmere  which  William  wrote  before 
they  started.  There  was  more  romance  in  the  Farewell  than  in 
the  marriage.  A  cool  temperature  brooded  over  the  admirable 
arrangement  by  which  Wordsworth,  at  thirty-two,  made  his 
Penrith  playmate  and  affectionate  lifelong  friend  into  his  wife 
and  other  self.  The  brother  and  sister  started  on  their  journey 
in  July;  and  between  their  departure  and  the  wedding  came 
their  memorable  visit  to  Calais, — memorable,  because,  as  we, 
shall  see  before  this  chapter  is  finished,  it  stirred  Wordsworth 
into  a  poetry  of  society  and  politics,  as  great,  in  its  way,  as  any 
of  his  poetry  of  Nature.  After  a  little  supplementary  touring 
by  William  and  Dorothy  about  England,  the  marriage  took 
place  in  Brompton  Church,  near  the  Hutchinsons'  home  at 
Gallow  Hill  in  Yorkshire,  between  Scarborough  and  Pickering. 
Dorothy  seems  to  have  been  the  only  member  of  the  Words- 
worth family  who  was  there,  and  even  she  was  not  present  at 
the  quiet  wedding  before  breakfast.  She  contented  herself 
with  looking  from  her  bedroom  window  at  the  party  going 
down  the  avenue  to  church,  and  falling  on  her  beloved  William's 
bosom  when  he  came  back,  a  married  man.  One  is  reminded 
of  the  Carlyles'  wedding-journey,  and  of  the  indispensableness 
of  "  brother  John's "  company  to  the  bridegroom's  happiness,' 
when  one  reads  that  Dorothy  accompanied  her  brother  and  his 
wife  in  the  first  drive  of  the  honeymoon  towards  Grasmere." 
They  made  a  placid  and  happy  trio,  rolling  along  through 
"sunshine  and  showers,  pleasant  talk,  love  and  cheerfulness." 

170 


lisdi 


THE   POET   AS   CRITIC    AND    POLITICIAN       171 

They  walked  about,  still  a  trio,  during  the  halt  for  luncheon  ; 
j  walked  in  the  churchyard  at  Kirby,  "  and  read  the  gravestones." 
And  so  on,  through  the  three  days,  by  Helmsley,  and  Hawes 
and  Garsdale,  to  Kendal  and  home.  "We  arrived  at  Gras- 
mere,"  Dorothy  writes  in  her  journal,  "  at  about  six  o'clock  on 
Wednesday  evening,  the  6th  of  October,  1802.  I  cannot  describe 
what  I  felt.  We  went  by  candle  light  into  the  garden,  and  were 
astonished  at  the  growth  of  the  brooms,  Portugal  laurels,  etc. 
The  next  day,  we  unpacked  the  boxes.  On  Friday  8,  Mary 
and  I  walked  first  upon  the  hillside,  and  then  in  John's  Grove, 
then  in  view  of  Rydal,  the  first  walk  that  I  had  taken  with  my 
sister." 

It  is  a  homely  and  temperate  story ;  but  happy  marriage, 
fortunately,  requires  neither  romance  nor  fever.  And  happy 
marriage  William  and  Mary  Wordsworth  assuredly  achieved. 
Romance  or  no,  the  husband  of  three  years'  standing  who  can 
sing  of 'his  wife  as  Wordsworth  did  of  his,  and  with  an  accent 
of  sincerity  so  clear  through  the  lovely  words,  is  a  happy  man. 

"  She  was  a  phantom  of  delight : "  we  need  not  quote  the 
rest.  Other  poems  have  much  the  same  burden.  In  The 
Prelude  the  poet  recurs  to  the  ideas  and  words  of  the  lyric  just 
cited,  and  thinks  of  his  wife's  presence  as  no  ignis  fatuiis^  but 
an  abiding  glow,  lighting  up  the  heart. 

"  She  came,  no  more  a  phantom  to  adorn 
A  moment,  but  an  inmate  of  the  heart, 
And  yet  a  spirit  there  for  me  enshrined 
To  penetrate  the  lofty  and  the  low  ; 
Even  as  one  essence  of  pervading  light 
Shines  in  the  brightest  of  ten  thousand  stars, 
And  the  meek  worm  that  finds  her  lonely  lamp 
Couched  in  the  dewy  grass." 

Dedicating  to  her  The  White  Doe  of  Rylstone  many  years 
later  in  Spenserian  stanzas,  he  recalls  happy  evenings  of 
companionship  at  Dove  Cottage  when  the  three  (for  Dorothy 
was  always  there)  read  Spenser  together,  and  commemorates 
his  wife's  love  of  The  Doe  as  its  story  was  unfolded.  Nor  did 
the  deep  and  tranquil  poetry  of  married  life  lose  itself  in  the 
marshes  of  habit  or  the  dry  wastes  of  age.  Wordsworth's  most 
beautiful  lines  about  his  wife  were  written  when  he  was  between 
fifty  and  sixty,  and  had  been  more  than  twenty  years  married. 


172  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

The   following  holds   high  rank   in  the  anthology  of  wedded 
love — 

"  O  dearer  far  than  light  and  life  are  dear, 
Full  oft  our  human  foresight  I  deplore  ; 
Trembling,  through  my  unworthiness,  with  fear, 

That  friends,  by  death  disjoined,  may  meet  no  more  ! 

"Misgivings,  hard  to  vanquish  or  control, 

Mix  with  the  day,  and  cross  the  hour  of  rest ; 
While  all  the  future,  for  thy  purer  soul, 
With  *  sober  certainties '  of  love  is  blest. 

"  That  sigh  of  thine,  not  meant  for  human  ear, 
Tells  that  these  words  thy  humbleness  offend  ; 
Yet  bear  me  up — else  faltering  in  the  rear 
Of  a  steep  march  :  support  me  to  the  end. 

"  Peace  settles  where  the  intellect  is  meek, 
And  Love  is  dutiful  in  thought  and  deed  ; 
Through  thee  communion  with  that  Love  I  seek : 
The  faith  Heaven  strengthens  where  he  moulds  the  Creed." 

Mrs.  Wordsworth  was  supposed  not  to  be  beautiful,  nor  did 
even  her  husband  claim  perfection  for  her. 

"  Heed  not  tho'  none  should  call  thee  fair  " 

he  exhorted  her ;  and  he  bid  her  rejoice  that  she  was  not 
angelic.  In  an  atrabilious  mood,  Carlyle,  who  saw  her  when 
she  was  growing  an  old  woman,  wrote  of  her  as  "  a  small, 
withered,  puckered,  winking  lady."  When  she  was  elderly, 
and  already,  in  her  close-set  cap,  looked  old,  her  portrait 
was  painted  by  Margaret  Gillies.  The  picture  is  a  beautiful 
one  ;  the  eyes  that  look  up  under  thick  brows  are  gentle  and 
modest ;  the  mouth,  prematurely  sunken,  has  a  comforting 
sweetness.  At  first  the  picture  was  a  trial  to  Wordsworth, 
who  would  fain  have  had  the  likeness  of  her  youth. 

"  Tis  a  fruitless  task  to  paint  for  me 

Who,  yielding  not  to  changes  Time  has  made, 
By  the  habitual  light  of  memory  see 

Eyes  unbedimmed,  see  bloom  that  cannot  fade, 
And  smiles  that  from  their  birthplace  ne'er  shall  flee, 
Into  the  land  where  ghosts  and  phantoms  be." 

In  time,  however,  he  was  able  to  reach  a  better  construction 


MRS.   WORDSWORTH 

BY   MARGARET   GILLIES 


I 


^      OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF  . 


THE   POET  AS   CRITIC   AND   POLITICIAN       173 


I  of  the  facts,  and  to  realize  that  his  love  was  poised  on  nothing 
i  so  frail  as  mere  youth. 

"  O,  my  Beloved,  I  have  done  thee  wrong, 
Conscious  of  blessedness,  but,  whence  it  sprung, 
Even  too  heedless,  as  I  now  perceive  ; 
Morn  into  noon  did  pass,  noon  into  eve, 
And  the  old  day  was  welcome  as  the  young. 
As  welcome  and  as  beautiful — in  sooth 
More  beautiful,  as  being  a  thing  more  holy ; 
Thanks  to  thy  virtues,  to  the  eternal  youth 
Of  all  thy  goodness,  never  melancholy  ; 
To  thy  large  heart  and  humble  mind,  that  cast 
Into  one  vision,  future,  present,  past." 

De  Quincey's  well-known  impressions  of  Mrs.  Wordsworth  in 

;i807  must  be  given  for  what  they  are  worth.     They  agree  with 

jail  that  we  know  and  can  infer  from  other  sources.     Standing  in 

jthe  kitchen-parlour   at   Dove  Cottage,    De    Quincey    saw   two 

jladies  enter  the  room.     "  The  foremost,  a  tallish  young  woman, 

I  with  the  most  winning  expression  of  benignity  on  her  features  ; 

advanced  to  me,  presenting  her  hand  with  so  frank  an  air,  that 

all   embarrassment  must   have   fled  in   a  moment   before   the 

Jnative  goodness  of  her  manner.     This  was  Mrs.  Wordsworth. 

'.  .  .  She  furnished  a  remarkable  proof  how  possible  it  is  for  a 

I  woman   neither  handsome   nor    even   comely  ...  to   exercise. 

all  the  practical  fascination  of  beauty,  through  the  mere  com- 

ipensatory  charms  of  sweetness  all  but  angelic,  of  simplicity  the 

most  entire,  womanly  self-respect  and  purity  of  heart  speaking 

;:hrough  all  her  looks,  acts,  and  movements.    Words,  I  was  going 

i':o  have  added  ;  but  her  words  were  few.     In  reality,  she  talked 

50  little,  that  Mr.  Slave-Trade  Clarkson  used  to  allege  against 

ler,  that  she  could  only  say,  *  God  bless  yoti  ! '     Certainly,  her 

ntellect  was  not  of  an  active  order  ;  but  in  a  quiescent,  reposing, 

neditative  way,  she  appeared  always  to  have  a  genial  enjoyment 

irom  her  own  thoughts  ;  and  it  would  have  been  strange  indeed 

I  If  she,  who  enjoyed  such  eminent  advantages  of  training,  from 

I  he  daily  society  of  her  husband  and  his  sister,  failed  to  acquire 

lome   power   of  judging   for  herself,   and  putting   forth   some 

I  unctions  of  activity.    But  undoubtedly  that  was  not  her  element : 

o  feel  and  to  enjoy  in  a  luxurious  repose  of  mind — there  was 

jier  forte   and   her   peculiar    privilege.    .    .    .    Her   figure   was 


174  WORDSWORTH  AND   HIS   CIRCLE 


tolerably  good.  In  complexion  she  was  fair,  and  there  was 
something  peculiarly  pleasing  even  in  this  accident  of  the  skin, 
for  it  was  accompanied  by  an  animated  expression  of  health,  a^  ?- 
blessing  which,  in  fact,  she  possessed  uninterruptedly."  Even  a 
slight  squint,  De  Quincey  tells  us,  was  no  deformity  in  her  face. 
"  AH  faults,  had  they  been  ten  times  more  and  greater,  would 
have  been  neutralized  by  that  supreme  expression  of  her 
features,  to  the  unity  of  which  every  lineament  in  the  fixed 
parts,  and  every  undulation  in  the  moving  parts  of  her  counte 
nance,  concurred,  viz.  a  sunny  benignity — a  radiant  graciousness 
— such  as  in  this  world  I  never  saw  surpassed." 

The  Words  worths'  union  was  perfected  by  children,  all  five 
of  whom  were  born  at  Grasmere.  There  were  three  sons  and 
two  daughters,  who  came  in  the  following  order : — 

John,  June  i8,  1803. 
Dorothy  (Dora),  August  16,  1804. 
Thomas,  June  16,  1806. 
Catharine,  September  6,  1808. 
William,  May  12,  18 10. 

Only  the  first  two  and  the  youngest  lived  to  grow  up: 
Catharine  and  Thomas  both  died  in  18 12,  their  loss  darkening 
the  last  year  at  Grasmere.  Katy  was  drooping  in  181 1,  and  a 
family  journey  in  search  of  reviving  air  was  made  from  Gras 
mere  Rectory,  into  which  the  Wordsworths  had  just  moved,  tc 
Bootle,  on  the  Cumbrian  coast.  Wordsworth  has  described 
the  journey  in  his  Epistle  to  Sir  George  Beatimo?it.  Katy  was 
much  loved,  and  was  one  of  her  father's  many  studies  in  the 
poetry  of  childhood.     He  wrote  of  her  in  the  Bootle  year  : — 


"  Loving  she  is,  and  tractable,  though  wild  ; 
And  Innocence  hath  privilege  in  her 
To  dignify  arch  looks  and  laughing  eyes, 
And  feats  of  cunning  ;  and  the  pretty  round 
Of  trespasses,  affected  to  provoke 
Mock-chastisement  and  partnership  in  play. 
And,  as  a  faggot  sparkles  on  the  hearth, 
Not  less  if  unattended  and  alone 
Than  when  both  young  and  old  sit  gathered  round 
And  take  delight  in  its  activity  ; 
Even  so  this  happy  Creature  of  herself 
Is  all-sufficient,  solitude  to  her 
Is  blithe  society,  who  fills  the  air 
With  gladness  and  involuntary  songs." 


8:.: 
it::.: 


te;: 


THE   POET  AS   CRITIC  AND  POLITICIAN       175 


^  was 
••skin, 

^vena 
irfact 
■  would 


nxed 

".jiinte. 


The  visit  to  Bootle  did  little  good  :  Katy  was  marked  for 
death  ;  and  in  June,  1812,  death  took  her.  Six  months  later, 
struck  down  by  the  seqiielcB  of  measles,  went  her  little  brother 
Tom,  who,  in  the  autumn,  used  to  sweep  the  leaves  from  Katy's 
grave.     The  following  year  the  Wordsworths  left  Grasmere. 

A  sonnet,  curiously  reminiscent  of  his  little  dead  daughter, 
and  one  of  the  finest  of  his  rare  outbreaks  of  passionate  feeling, 
was  written  by  Wordsworth  years  after.  In  a  lapse  of  memory 
—a  momentary  trance  of  keen  emotion — he  felt  himself  turning 
i^aess  for  sympathy  to  Katy,  so  long  "  earth  in  earth "  by  Grasmere 
Church.     What  a  lapse,  what  a  treachery  of  love  ! 


all  five 
"joand 


\ 


iii;- 


Surprised  by  joy — impatient  as  the  Wind 

I  turned  to  share  the  transport — Oh  !  with  whom 

But  Thee,  deep  buried  in  the  silent  tomb, 

That  spot  which  no  vicissitude  can  find  ? 

Love,  faithful  love,  recalled  thee  to  my  mind — 

But  how  could  I  forget  thee  ?    Through  what  power, 

Even  for  the  least  division  of  an  hour, 

Have  I  been  so  beguiled  as  to  be  blind 

To  my  most  grievous  loss  ? — That  thought's  return 

Was  the  worst  pang  that  sorrow  ever  bore. 

Save  one,  one  only,  when  I  stood  forlorn, 

Knowing  my  heart's  best  treasure  was  no  more  ; 

That  neither  present  time,  nor  years  unborn. 

Could  to  my  sight  that  heavenly  face  restore." 


:x  up 

i:keQiii| 
and 

TiGras 

ijved,! 

cicrik       1*^0  phases  of  Wordsworth's  Grasmere  life  remain  for  more 

^itywJ  leed  than  we  have  yet  given  to  them. 
^^  I.  Wordsworth,  we  already  realize,  was  a  literary  critic,  and 
L  literary  critic  of  no  small  importance.  By  his  criticism,  quite 
IS  much  as  by  his  poetry — and  more,  perhaps,  than  by  any 
)ersonal  association — he  was  in  touch  with  others,  a  member  of 
circle.  For  the  Romantic  Revival  had  its  criticism  as  well  as 
ts  poetry — criticism  with  which  it  justified  and  fortified  itself, 
is  well  as  criticism  which  it  provoked,  and  which  tried  to  hinder 
L  It  was  a  criticism  rich  and  various,  a  criticism  of  different 
)arentages  and  different  phases,  of  splendid  individuality  as 
ivell  as  of  loyalty  to  tradition. 

\  The  last  word  of  true  eighteenth-century  criticism — the 
riticism  which  began  its  maturity  in  Dryden — was  spoken  in 
ohxison's  Lives  of  the  Poets.  One  may  call  it  on  the  whole  a 
riticism  of  appraisement  according  to  tradition  :  writers,  writings, 


176  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 


were  judged  from  a  superior  standpoint,  and  were  acquitted  oi 
condemned  by  standards  set,  or  supposed  to  be  set,  by  Aristotle 
and  an  orthodox  succession  descending  from  him.  There  were, 
of  course,  modifications  of  the  prevalent  tone.  The  two  most 
eminent  critics  of  the  school,  Dryden  and  Johnson,  diluted 
tradition  by  large  wholesome  draughts  of  common  sense.  Ir 
the  mid-time  of  the  school's  vogue  critics  appeared  like  the 
Wartons,  who  tried  to  base  judgment  on  admiration  rathei 
than  approval.  Addison's  criticism  was  not  as  wholly  "  based 
on  convention  "  as  Matthew  Arnold  taught  us  it  was.  But  even 
the  Lives  of  the  Poets,  wonderful  as  is  their  catholicity,  admir 
able  their  conscientiousness,  and  unfailing  their  reasonableness, 
^x^  judicial — a  collection  of  verdicts  and  sentences;  and  the'' 
time  had  come  for  a  new  criticism  based  on  appreciation,  a 
criticism  living,  like  humanity  itself,  "by  admiration,  hopej*-'" 
and  love." 

Such  a  criticism  was  supplied,  most  conspicuously,  by 
Charles  Lamb  and  Coleridge.  Both  those  great  critics  showed 
themselves  wholly  free  from  conventional  trammels  and 
"  Augustan "  models,  and  rediscovered  the  true  classics  of 
English  literature.  They  refused  to  date  English  poetry  from;  " 
the  close  of  the  Elizabethan  age ;  they  refused  to  make  any  ^'^  '■ 
kind  of  apologies  for  Shakespeare.  Charles  Lamb  rediscoveredr^-" 
the  Elizabethans,  felt  the  human  heart  beating  through  them, 
made  them  speak  for  themselves  afresh  to  English  readers. 
Coleridge  brought  to  the  interpretation  of  Shakespeare — and  of 
how  many  besides! — the  opulent  resources  of  his  subtle  and 
original  mind.  Nor,  standing  not  very  far  from  these  giants, 
ought  William  Hazlitt  to  be  overlooked.  It  is  often  from  the 
lesser  men  who  represent  a  movement  that  we  learn  most 
about  the  movement  itself.  And  Hazlitt  was  no  petty  critic 
or  writer ;  he  was  more  a  critic  by  profession  than  Lamb  or 
Coleridge  ;  he  brought  to  his  work  a  whole-hearted  devotion, 
and,  when  his  thought  was  not  deflected  by  petulant  moods  and 
party-spirit,  a  broad  rational  appreciativeness,  a  fearless  candour, 
a  wealth  of  eloquent  expression,  which  are  an  honour  to  letters. 

Much  of  the  new  criticism  might  have  been  called,  and  was 
considered,  mere  "  mutual  admiration."  According  to  that 
other  school  of  critics  associated  with  the  Edinburgh,  the 
Quarterly,  and  to  some  extent  with  Blackivood,  the  best  criticism 


'■'■^  DIOS 


^'  ral 
■"base 
i:teve 
',  admii 


THE   POET  AS   CRITIC   AND   POLITICIAN       177 

which  England  had  yet  produced  was  only  the  self-advertise- 
ment of  a  clique  of  incompetent  and  tiresome  poets.  The 
criticism  of  Jeffrey  and  the  rest  was  not  without  its  merit  ;  but 
it  was,  like  the  characteristic  eighteenth-century  criticism, 
delivered  de  haut  en  bas ;  it  was  criticism  of  approval  or  dis- 
approval, not  of  sympathy  and  reverence ;  and  it  was  spoiled 
by  the  bad  standard  of  a  misused  tradition.  The  "  mutual 
admiration  "  of  the  other  critics,  who  appreciated  Wordsworth 
without  prejudice  and  without  flattery,  who  admired  him 
generously  without  losing  sight  of  any  of  his  short-comings,  was 
an  insight  which  posterity  has  fully  ratified. 

The  solitary  and  self-involved  Wordsworth  had  nothing  to 

^jtjldo  with  mutual  admiration.     His  criticism,  partly  apologetic, 

r^k  partly  revolutionary,  dealt  with  abstract  principles  rather  than 
with  particular  works  or  particular  writers.  It  falls  into  rank 
with  the  critical  work  of  Coleridge,  but  of  Coleridge  the  literary 

.Q5ly  jj  theorist  rather  than  Coleridge  the  literary  critic  proper.     Indeed, 
|,3^^j  as  we  have  already  seen,  Coleridge's  philosophy  of  poetry,  his 
body  of  poetic   theory,  in   great   measure   owes   its   origin  to 
Wordsworth's  influence,  an  influence  often  antagonistic. 

Wordsworth's  criticism  was  the  fruit  of  a  nature  essentially 
and  constitutionally  philosophic.  He  was  no  keen  natural  lover 
of  books  like  Lamb  or  Hazlitt,  but  an  intense  believer  in  the 
unity  of  apparently  divergent  things,  and  acutely  jealous  for  the 
honour  of  poesy,  his  own  art.  It  is  to  be  found  chiefly  in 
the  preface  to  the  second  issue  of  Lyrical  Ballads  in  1800;  in 
an  appendix-note  on  Poetic  Diction  to  the  third  issue  in  1802  ; 
and  in  the  preface  to  the  first  collected  edition  of  the  poems 

rfrwntl   '^^  ^^^5*    '^^^  last-named  has  a  Supplementary  Essay  of  the 
same  date. 

The  first  preface  is  the  true  critical  counterpart  of  Words- 


:ei  as 

fissicsi 

Jdryfroi 

sake 

ikovere 

:;hthe[ 

\  reade 

ft-and 

nbdea 

ocgiaDi 


xtty  cni 
liinbl  wo^^^'s   strongest  young   poetry.      He  meant  the  two  to  be 

complementary :  the  poetry  was  to  exemplify  the  theory,  and 
the  theory  to  explain  the  poetry.     The  specific  objects  of  the 
800  preface   were   two  :   (i)  to   defend   the   style  of  Lyrical 
Ballads  ;  (2)  to  define  and  defend  poetry. 

(i)  The  defence  oi  Lyrical  Ballads  resolves  itself  into  the  de- 
fence of  that  extremely  plain  diction  which  so  scandalized  the 


\}t0 

ooodsai^ 

..toiette 
'.■•At 


:r- 


jworld.     We  already  know  the  main  lines  of  the  argument :  the 
oet  chose  themes  taken  from  ordinary  life  and  simple  humanity, 


^cfitici-  ^ 


178  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

and  dealt  with  them  in  language  formed  out  of  the  ordinary 
speech  of  men  and  women.  The  resultant  poetry  was  to  be 
coloured  by  imagination  only,  and  surcharged  with  emotion. 
Why  this  choice  and  method  ?  Why  does  the  poet  go,  why 
ought  he  to  go,  to  common,  and  especially  to  rural,  life  for  his 
material  and  his  medium?  Because,  he  maintains,  men  and 
Nature  there  are  in  their  interrelation  simpler  and  less  sophisti- 
cated than  when  they  have  undergone  elaborate  civilization. 
And  the  central  principle  of  his  art  has  been  Wi-dX  feeling  should 
^^  give  importance  to"  action  and  situation,  and  not  vice  versd. 

This  principle  deserve*;  a  moment's  consideration.  Accord- 
ing to  Wordsworth,  the  poet  has  for  his  characteristic  endow- 
ment and  ^ower  feeling,  i.e.  thought  prompted  and  accompanied 
by  emotion,  so  prompted  by  emotion  as  at  times  to  seem 
posterior  to  it  in  time — 

"  In  such  high  hour 
Of  visitation  from  the  living  God 
Thought  was  not ; " 

so  Wordsworth  himself  sang  of  a  moment  before  thought  was 
born.  Thus  endowed,  the  poet  takes  the  Universe  for  his 
province ;  but  he  holds  it  as  God  holds  it,  with  an  equality  of 
regard  which  transcends  all  ordinary  human  notions  of  size  and 
degree. 

"  Say  not '  a  small  event ! '    Why  *  small '  ? 

Costs  it  more  pain  that  this,  ye  call 

A  *  great  event,'  should  come  to  pass. 

Than  that  ?     Untwine  me  from  the  mass 

Of  deeds  which  make  up  life,  one  deed 

Power  shall  fall  short  in  or  exceed  !  " 

Browning's  words  seem  to  catch  and  fix  Wordsworth's  mean- 
ing. It  is  by  virtue  of  this  transcendent,  godlike,  equalizing 
power  of  "  feeling,"  that  the  poet  attains  to  creative  imagination, 
that  highest  potentiality  of  achievement  which  all  men  recognize 
in  him,  but  for  which  inferior  people  are  apt  to  mistake  the 
sensationalism  and  grandiosity  of  writers  who  lash  their  dull 
minds  into  activity  which  they  miscall  feeling,  and  their  language 
into  diction  which  they  miscall  poetic,  by  stimulants  in  the  shape 
of  "  great  events/'  distinguished  personages,  and  sentiments  in 
full  dress. 

(2)  Wordsworth  defines  poetry;  or,  rather,  he  discourses  on  the 


THE  POET  AS   CRITIC  AND  POLITICIAN       179 

mission  and  methods  of  true  poetry.  He  always  considers  the 
poet,  in  spite  of  the  feeling  which  he  claims  for  him,  as  a 
philosophic  thinker,  who  recollects,  reflects,  and  selects,  and 
who,  though  his  work  may  indeed  be  described  as  a  spontaneous 
overflow  of  feeling,  and  though  his  immediate  aim  is  to  give 
pleasure,  is  always  more  or  less  directly  conscious  of  aiming  at 
trtitJu  In  this  Wordsworth  feels  no  permanent  antithesis : 
Truth,  he  holds,  is  Beauty  (the  source  of  pleasure) ;  the  poet  is 
the  philosopher.  Similarly,  the  common  is  the  nearer  manifesta- 
tion of  the  Divine ;  tranquillity  is  the  purest  source  of  emotion. 
In  his  most  appreciative  gush,  the  p(^^t  is  much  of-  an  egoist ; 
when  he  is  most  an  egoist,  he  is  most  truly  worshipping  his 
Creator. 

I  Poetry  takes  its  origin,  Wordsworth  held,  from  emotion 
recollected  in  tranquillity.  The  poet  is  he  who  deliberately  calls 
up  in  tranquillity  impassioned  ideas  and  situations,  and  who  can 
find  no  better  language  to  express  the  result  than  the  ordinary 
speech  of  men.  In  doing  this  with  pleasure  and  for  pleasure, 
the  poet  does  nothing  beneath  the  dignity  of  a  high  mission. 
For  "  the  native  and  naked  dignity  of  man  "  is  in  no  ascetic 
antithesis  to  pleasure,  but  is  in  fact  one  with  it.  The  pleasure 
which  the  poet  has  and  gives  is  philosophic  as  well  as  poetic  ; 
it  arises  from  his  contemplation,  his  reflective  contemplation,  of 
the  Universe.  Nothing  in  the  Universe  is  alien  from  him  ;  not 
even  the  minuticB  of  science ;  "  Poetry  is  the  breath  and  finer 
spirit  of  all  knowledge^ 

But  as  to  the  poet,  let  Wordsworth  speak  for  himself :  "  Let 
me  ask,  what  is  meant  by  the  word  *  Poet  *  ?  What  is  a  Poet  ? 
To  whom  does  he  address  himself?  and  what  language  is  to  be 
expected  from  him  ?  He  is  a  man  speaking  to  men  ;  a  man,  it 
is  true,  endowed  with  more  lively  sensibility,  more  enthusiasm 
and  tenderness,  who  has  a  greater  knowledge  of  human  nature, 
and  a  more  comprehensive  soul,  than  are  supposed  to  be 
common  among  mankind  ;  a  man  pleased  with  his  own  passions 
i  and  volitions,  and  who  rejoices  more  than  other  men  in  the 
spirit  of  life  that  is  in  him  ;  delighting  to  contemplate  similar 
\  volitions  and  passions  as  manifested  in  the  goings-on  of  the 
Universe,  and  habitually  impelled  to  create  them  where  he  does 
not  find  them.  To  these  qualities  he  has  added  a  disposition 
to  be  affected  more  than  other  men  by  absent  things  as  if  they 


180  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

were  present ;  an  ability  of  conjuring  up  in  himself  passions, 
which  are  indeed  far  from  being  the  same  as  those  produced  by 
real  events,  yet  (especially  in  those  parts  of  the  general  sympathy 
which  are  pleasing  and  delightful)  do  more  nearly  resemble  the 
passions  produced  by  real  events,  than  anything  which,  from 
the  motions  of  their  own  minds  merely,  other  men  are  accus- 
tomed to  feel  in  themselves :  whence,  and  from  practice, 
he  has  acquired  a  greater  readiness  and  power  in  expressing 
what  he  thinks  and  feels,  and  especially  those  thoughts  and 
feelings  which,  by  his  own  choice,  or  from  the  structure  of  his 
own  mind,  arise  in  him  without  immediate  external  excitement." 

Where,  in  this  conception,  is  the  place  for  metre  and 
rhyme,  the  formal  differenticE  of  poetry  ?  Wordsworth's  defence, 
so  to  call  it,  of  metre  and  rhyme  is  subtle  and  interesting.  If 
the  poet  is  to  feel,  think,  and  write  only  as  a  specially  intense 
ordinary  person,  and  to  express  himself  in  language  which  is 
essentially  identical  with  the  language  of  prose,  why  should  he 
hamper  or  artificialize  himself  by  what  makes  his  expression 
specifically  different  from  that  of  prose  ? 

Wordsworth  gives  three  reasons.  Firsts  the  somewhat 
surprising  one  that  verse  is  a  restraint  on  the  vagaries  and 
possible  excesses  of  passion.  This  sounds  paradoxical ;  for  we 
are  accustomed  to  think  of  verse  as  the  specifically  appropriate 
medium  of  impassioned  feeling,  and  as  chosen  for  the  very 
reason  that  it  is  free  from  the  fetters  of  prose.  But,  says 
Wordsworth,  passionate  feelitig  and  the  excitement  which  is 
inseparable  from  the  design  of  poetry  are  kept  within  bounds  by 
the  regularity  of  metre.  And  this  is  not  all.  Metre  not  only 
gives  regularity  to  language,  but  *'  divests  language,  in  a  certain 
degree,  of  its  reality,"  and  throws  "  a  sort  of  half-consciousness 
of  unsubstantial  existence  over  the  whole  composition."  This 
touch  of  unreal  glamour  given  by  verse  enables  us  to  bear,  e,g.^ 
pathos,  which  would  be  intolerable  in  the  hard  everyday  truth- 
fulness of  prose.  "  This  opinion,"  Wordsworth  holds,  "  may  be 
illustrated  by  appealing  to  the  reader's  own  experience  of  the 
reluctance  with  which  he  comes  to  the  re-perusal  of  the  dis- 
tressful parts  of  Clarissa  Harlowe  or  the  Gamester ;  while 
Shakespeare's  writings,  in  the  most  pathetic  scenes,  never  act 
upon  us,  as  pathetic,  beyond  the  bounds  of  pleasure — an  effect 
which,  in  a  much  greater  degree  than  might  be  imagined,  is  to 


THE   POET  AS   CRITIC   AND  POLITICIAN       181 

be  ascribed  to  small,  but  continual  and  regular  impulses  of 
pleasurable  surprise  from  the  metrical  arrangement."  Surely  this 
distinction  between  the  "  pain "  with  which  we  shut  Clarissa^ 
and  the  "pleasure"  with  which  we  see  the  curtain  fall  on  Lear 
or  Othello  is,  to  say  the  least  of  it,  disputable  ;  but  the  important 
point  is  to  realize  how  much  stress  is  laid  by  the  austere  Words- 
worth on  pleasure  as  the  end  of  poetry  ;  and  this  association 
between  metre  and  pleasure  is  to  be  regarded  as  the  second  line 
of  his  defence. 

The  third  line  of  defence  is  equally  subtle,  and  Wordsworth 
does  little  more  than  hint  at  it.  Metre  and  rhyme  are  of  value, 
he  says,  because  one  element  of  the  "  pleasure  "  given  by  poetry 
is  the  sense  of  unity  in  diversity  which  is  conveyed  by  the  verse- 
form.  Wordsworth,  in  fact,  seems  to  regard  the  world  of  emotion 
and  passion  which  confronts  the  poet  as  so  imperfectly  cosmic 
that  he  must  impose  upon  it  the  forms  of  his  own  mind — forms 
expressed  in  the  "  regularities  "  of  verse,  if  he  is  to  "  enjoy  "  it, 
as  a  poet  may  and  should. 

In  all  this  Wordsworth  seems  to  be  feeling  after  a  theory  of 
imagination  such  as  he  expounded  in  the  preface  and  essay  of 
1815.  That  theory  we  may  briefly  notice  here,  before  parting 
with  Wordsworth  the  critic. 

Imagination  is  one  of  the  hardest  words  in  the  language  ; 
but  all  literary  and  artistic  critics  seem  to  understand  by  it  that 
intellectual  faculty  by  which  for  artistic  purposes  the  data  of 
perception  and  recollection  are  arbitrarily  modified  or  changed 
by  the  percipient  or  recollecting  individual.  It  is  the  individtc- 
ality  as  well  as  the  artistic  end  of  the  faculty,  which  distinguishes 
imagination  from  mere  knowledge,  as  Kant  thought  of  know- 
ledge ;  and  it  is  the  arbitrariness  of  its  method  which  makes 
men  speak  of  imagination  as  creative. 

As  creative,  and  therefore  Divine,  Wordsworth  constantly 
spoke  of  imagination  in  his  poetry.  In  his  Preface  of  18 15,  he 
grapples  the  matter  in  prose.  Imagination,  with  which  he 
conjoins  "fancy,"  is  one  of  the  poet's  faculties  —  the  faculty- 
which  "  modifies,"  "  creates,"  and  "  associates  " ;  and  it  is  dis- 
tinguished from  "  invention,"  which  "  composes  "  characters  out 
of  the  data  of  observation  and  introspection.  The  modifying 
energy  of  imagination  (which  he  elsewhere  calls  an  "  endowing  " 
power)  is  governed  "  by  fixed  laws  "  ;  but  Wordsworth  does  not 


182  WORDSWORTH   AND  HIS   CIRCLE 

tell  us  what  they  are.  He  prefers  to  give  instances  of  the 
energy.  When  Shakespeare  speaks  of  the  samphire-gatherer 
"  hanging  "  on  the  cliff,  or  when  Milton  speaks  of  a  far-off  fleet 
seen  "  hanging  "  in  the  clouds,  or  again,  when  Wordsworth  himself 
speaks  of  the  stock-dove  "brooding"  over  his  own  voice,  or 
suggests  that  the  cuckoo  is  a  voice  rather  than  a  bird,  the  poet 
in  each  case  is  exercising  imagination  as  a  modifying  power. 
A  plain  man  would  say  that  all  these  were  instances  simply  of 
happy  or  beautiful  metaphor.  And  again,  in  the  noble  images 
which  expound  the  leech-gatherer's  figure  in  ResohUion  and 
Independence : — 

"  As  a  huge  stone  is  sometimes  seen  to  lie 
Couched  on  the  bald  top  of  an  eminence, 

Like  a  sea-beast  crawled  forth,  which  on  a  shelf 
Of  rock  or  sand  reposeth,  there  to  sun  himself, 
Such  seemed  this  man  ; 


Motionless  as  a  cloud  the  old  man  stood. 

That  heareth  not  the  loud  winds  when  they  call ; " 

the  plain  man  is  content  to  find  a  series  of  admirable  similes. 
But  Wordsworth  explains  that  "  in  these  images,  the  conferring, 
the  abstracting,  and  the  modifying  powers  of  the  Imagination, 
immediately  and  mediately  acting,  are  all  brought  into  conjunc- 
tion." The  Imagination  takes  life  from  the  sea-beast  and  gives 
it  to  the  stone ;  while  the  leech-gatherer  himself  is  half-killed 
so  as  to  make  him  seem  almost  as  dead  as  the  stone. 

Imagination,  says  Wordsworth,  creates  in  innumerable  ways  ; 
chiefly,  perhaps,  by  "consolidating  numbers  into  unity,  and 
dissolving  and  separating  unity  into  number."  Thus  in 
Milton's  lines  about  the  Messiah — 

"  Attended  by  ten  thousand  thousand  Saints 
He  onward  came  :  far  off  his  coming  shone," 

Wordsworth  finds  that  the  retinue  of  saints,  and  the  Person 
of  the  Messiah  Himself,  are  lost  almost  and  merged  in  the 
splendour  of  that  indefinite  abstraction,  "  His  coming !  "  Here 
the  critic  is  perhaps  not  quite  so  convincing  as  when  he  quotes 
without  analysis  from  King  Lear  the  two  lines — 

*'  I  tax  not  you,  ye  Elements,  with  unkindness, 
I  never  gave  you  kingdoms,  call'd  you  daughters  !  " 


THE   POET   AS   CRITIC   AND   POLITICIAN       183 

as  an  instance  of  "human  and  dramatic  Imagination."  And 
indeed,  in  his  whole  treatment  of  imagination  Wordsworth 
is  disappointing ;  he  undertakes  more  than  he  carries  out ; 
his  analysis  breaks  down  and  falls  short.  By  the  idea  of 
"  Fancy "  he  seems  less  overcome  ;  though  he  is  perhaps  less 
lucid  in  his  account  of  it.  He  compares  and  contrasts  it  with 
imagination  ;  and  the  substance  of  his  meaning  apparently 
is  that  fancy,  unlike  imagination,  cannot  change^  except  by 
slight  superficial  modification,  the  data  given  to  her ;  their 
substance,  so  to  call  it,  remains  unalterable  by  so  slight  and 
tricksy  a  power ;  yet  she  can  move  her  data  about  like  puppets, 
and  can  play  upon  them  with  capricious  and  surprising  lights 
which  have  an  effect  that  may  be  almost  creative.  Moreover, 
fancy  "ambitiously  aims  at  a  rivalship  with  imagination,  and 
imagination  stoops  to  work  with  the  materials  of  fancy." 
Such  proceedings  and  interchanges,  the  plain  man  feels,  are  too 
complicated,  are  at  once  too  definitely  and  indefinitely  con- 
ceived, to  help  the  critic  or  reader  very  far  along  his  way. 

Wordsworth's  best  friends  and  most  sympathetic  expounders 
found  much  to  object  to  in  his  theories.  Coleridge,  who  loved 
psychological  jargon,  fell  foul  of  both  the  "poetic  diction"  and 
the  fancy-and-imagination  doctrines.  So  did  Hazlitt  and 
Leigh  Hunt  from  different  points  of  view ;  while  De  Quincey 
had  no  difficulty  in  showing  that  Wordsworth's  attitude  towards 
the  "  diction  "  of  verse  was  too  polemical  to  be  quite  sound. 

2.  The  other  capital  interest  of  Wordsworth  in  the  Grasmere 
days  was  the  condition  of  English  and  European  politics.  We 
remember  how  in  his  youth  his  whole  nature  was  played  upon 
like  a  musical  instrument  by  the  French  Revolution,  and  how 
he  was  thrown  into  moral  paralysis  and  practical  altruism  by 
his  country's  active  hostihty  to  France  in  1793.  Sir  John  Seeley 
has  pointed  out  that  we  make  a  mistake  when  we  regard  the 
brief  Peace  of  Amiens  in  1802-3  as  a  mere  interruption  in  a 
single  and  homogeneous  war.  He  has  reminded  us  that 
between  1793  and  181 5  England  and  Europe  were  in  arms 
against  two  quite  different  revolutions :  first,  the  French 
Revolution ;  and,  secondly,  the  Napoleonic  Revolution.  Roughly 
speaking,  the  French  Revolution  was  attacked  between  1793 
and  1802;  and  the  Napoleonic  between  1803  and  181 5.  If,  in 
one  sense.  Napoleon  was  the  product  of  the  French  Revolution, 


184  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

in  another  sense  he  was  its  enemy  and  destroyer ;  and  it 
was  thus  quite  logically  justifiable  to  wish  well  to  the  French 
Revolution  and  afterwards  to  breathe  out  threatenings  and 
slaughter  against  Napoleon.  This,  at  all  events,  was  what 
demonstrably  happened  in  Wordsworth's  case.  There  was  a 
very  real  sense  in  which  his  sympathy  with  France,  struggling 
against  aristocratic  and  clerical  abuses,  was  one  with  his 
sympathy  with  Europe,  struggling  against  Napoleon.  In  both 
struggles  the  battle-cry  was  liberty ;  and  for  liberty  Words- 
worth, between  Trafalgar  and  Waterloo,  lost  some  of  his  passion. 
Those  who  think  of  him  as  Browning's  Lost  Leader,  who  think 
of  him  as  "  breaking  from  the  van  and  the  freemen  "  "  and  sink- 
ing to  the  rear  and  the  slaves,"  think  of  him — to  say  the  least  of 
it — inaccurately.     He  did  something  very  different. 

The  anti-Napoleonic  struggle  itself  was  not  homogeneous. 
It  was  partly  a  resistance  of  governments  to  a  destroying  and 
usurping  government ;  partly  a  passionate  assertion  of  national 
independence.  It  was  national  independence — or,  as  men 
since  Wordsworth's  day  have  taken  to  calling  it,  "  nationality  " 
— that  asserted  itself  in  those  Spanish  and  German  uprisings 
which,  more  than  any  diplomacies  or  coalitions,  brought 
Napoleon  at  last  to  his  knees.  To  Wordsworth  Napoleon 
appeared  chiefly  as  a  robber  of  independence.  He  has  vividly 
painted  for  us  his  horror  and  anger  as  the  significance  of  the 
First  Consul  and  French  Emperor  became  clear  to  him — 

"  When,  finally  to  close 
And  seal  up  all  the  gains  of  France,  a  Pope 
Was  summoned  in  to  crown  an  Emperor  ; " 

and  when  indignation  had  to  serve  instead  of  hope.  But 
his  anti-Napoleonic  passion  was  not  fully  kindled  until  the 
tyrant  ravished  Switzerland  of  her  freedom.  Thenceforward 
he  was  to  Wordsworth  a  criminal  rather  than  a  conqueror. 

A  curiously  vital  link  binds  Wordsworth's  politics  with  his 
poetry.  At  Dove  Cottage  one  May  afternoon  in  1802,  Dorothy 
read  Milton's  sonnets  to  her  brother.  He  had  long  known 
them,  but  had  never  before  realized  their  power,  their  "  dignified 
simplicity  and  majestic  harmony."  He  at  once  "took  fire," 
and,  before  he  slept  that  night,  had  written  two  or  three  sonnets. 
If  they  were  not  his  first,  they  were  the  first  that  were  more 


THE   POET   AS   CRITIC   AND   POLITICIAN       185 


!  than  experiments.  Of  these,  only  one  survives ;  but  it  is  a 
:  memorable  one.  It  was  the  turning-point  of  the  struggle  ;  the 
:  Treaty  of  Amiens  had  been  two  months  signed  ;  Bonaparte 
;  had  been  three  years  First  Consul  and  was  becoming  a  portent 
a  in  men's  minds.  Wordsworth  was  beginning  to  speculate 
:  about  him,  beginning  to  fear  him  ;  but  he  had  not  yet  made 
;;  up  his  mind  about  him.  He  dedicated  to  him  his  first 
:  tentative  sonnet. 


■  I  grieved  for  Bonaparte,  with  a  vain 
And  an  unthinking  grief  !     The  tenderest  mood 
Of  that  Man's  mind — what  can  it  be  ?  what  food 
Fed  his  first  hopes  ?    What  knowledge  could  he  gain  ? 
'Tis  not  in  battles  that  from  youth  we  train 
The  Governor  who  must  be  wise  and  good. 
And  temper  with  the  sternness  of  the  brain 
Thoughts  motherly,  and  meek  as  womanhood. 
Wisdom  doth  live  with  children  round  her  knees  : 
Books,  leisure,  perfect  freedom,  and  the  talk 
Man  holds  with  week-day  man  in  the  hourly  walk 
Of  the  mind's  business  :  these  are  the  degrees 
By  which  true  Sway  doth  mount ;  this  is  the  stalk 
True  Power  doth  grow  on  :  and  her  rights  are  these." 


Already,    in    this    somewhat    irregular    piece,  Wordsworth 

llyf^howed  what  he  was  to  be  as  a  sonneteer ;  here  already  are  the 

inassiveness,  the  unity,  the  seriousness,  the  sense  of  climax  and 

inish, — above    all,   the   pregnant   suggestiveness   of  immortal 

)hrase,  which  make  the  sonnet  what  at  its  best   it  is.     But, 

notwithstanding  the  Miltonic  fire  which  he  felt  burning  within 

lim,  he  can  have  had  no  prevision  of  the  great  place  which  his 

onnets  were  to  hold  in  the  sum  of  his  work.     Nor  can  he  have 

ealized  the  significance  of  the  coincidence  which  made  Napoleon 

he  theme  of  his  first  efforts.     His  appreciativeness  of  the  sonnet 

nd  his  sense  of  its  fitness  to  some,  at  least,  of  his  poetic  moods, 

re  expressed  in  the  two  sonnets  on  the  sonnet  which  are  too 

imiliar  for  quotation  ;  that  which  speaks  of  the  form's  narrow 

'ounds  as  indeed  "no  prison,"  and  of  himself  as  finding  therein 

brief  solace"  under  "the  weight  of  too  much  liberty;"  and 

:iat  other,  composed  much  later,  in  a  walk  by  Rydal  lake,  in 

^hich  Wordsworth  defends   the   sonnet  on  the  ground  of  its 

lorious    history — the    sonnet    of    Petrarch,   Tasso,   Camoens, 

)ante ;  of  Shakespeare,  Spenser,  Milton.      He  was  to  use  it, 


186  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

exquisitely  and  nobly,  for  various  purposes ;  for  delicate  lane 
scape-painting  and  for  intimate  lyrical  out-breathings ;  bi 
chiefly  for  poetry  of  historical  sense  and  social,  ecclesiastica 
and  political  conviction ;  above  all,  for  the  passion  of  libert 
and  national  independence.  Therefore  it  was  not  "  idle  "  the 
his  first  sonnets  were  about  Napoleon. 

It  was  the  Peace  of  Amiens  that  made  it  possible  for  th 
Wordsworths  to  cross  to  Calais  in  the  summer  of  1802,  befoi 
William's  marriage.  The  poet's  mind  was  full  of  internation; 
politics  and  aglow  with  patriotism  ;  and  he  used  his  newl 
discovered  sonnet-medium  freely.  Looking  westward  at  tt 
setting  Venus  over  England,  he  sounds  greatly  the  note  ( 
patriotism,  daring  to  take  the  glorious  star  for  type  of  h 
country's  glory — 

"  Fair  star  of  evening,  splendour  of  the  west, 
Star  of  my  Country  !  on  the  horizon's  brink 
Thou  hangest,  stooping,  as  might  seem,  to  sink 
On  England's  bosom  ;  yet  well  pleased  to  rest, 
Meanwhile,  and  be  to  her  a  glorious  crest 
Conspicuous  to  the  Nations.     Thou,  I  think, 
Should'st  be  my  Country's  emblem  ;  and  should'st  wink. 
Bright  star  !  with  laughter  on  her  banners,  dress'd 
In  thy  fresh  beauty.     There  !  that  dusky  spot 
Beneath  thee,  that  is  England  ;  there  she  lies. 
Blessings  be  on  you  both  !  one  hope,  one  lot, 
One  life,  one  glory  ! — I,  with  many  a  fear 
For  my  dear  Country,  many  heartfelt  sighs, 
Among  men  who  do  not  love  her,  linger  here." 

It  was  the  first  time  he  had  been  in  France  since  1792  ;  ar 
in  the  ten  years  the  changes  there  had  been  greater  than  ar 
changes  in  his  own  mind  or  sympathies.  He  despised  tl 
servility  of  the  fickle  French  towards  the  First  Consul.  W/i 
hardship  had  it  been  to  wait  an  hour  f  he  puts  it  to  them  ;  havii 
destroyed  monarchy  by  so  terrible  a  stroke,  could  they  n 
have  given  "  equality  "  a  longer  trial,  so  that  if  there  was  to  1 
monarchy  again,  it  should  at  least  be  monarchy  rooting  deep  i 
in  well-tried  affections }  About  Calais  the  people  seemt  : 
indifferent  to  the  mushroom-monarch. 

"  I  have  bent  my  way  ' 

To  the  sea-coast,  noting  that  each  man  frames 
His  business  as  he  likes," 


THE   POET  AS  CRITIC   AND   POLITICIAN       187 

;hough  it  was  the  First  Consul's  birthday,  and  France  was 
lolding  high  festival.  The  memories  of  the  Revolution  in 
vhich  the  young  poet  so  passionately  believed,  had  dwindled 
:o  mocking  echoes.  He  remembered  how,  in  1790,  he  had 
leard  and  seen  the  hailing  of  Liberty  near  Calais — 

"  From  hour  to  hour  the  antiquated  Earth 
Beat  like  the  heart  of  Man  :  songs,  garlands,  mirth, 
Banners,  and  happy  faces,  far  and  nigh  !  " 

Now,  in  1802 — 

"  Sole  register  that  these  things  were. 
Two  solitary  greetings  have  I  heard, 
Good-morrow,  Citize7i !  a  hollow  word, 
As  if  a  dead  man  spake  it ! " 

The  Corsican  was  the  slayer  of  liberty  everywhere.  Four 
'ears  previously  he  had  seized  the  proud  Republic  of  Venice 
,s  a  conqueror,  and  had  handed  her  over  to  Austria.  Words- 
worth sang  her  dirge  in  the  great  sonnet  which  commemorated 
er  as  "  the  eldest  child  of  Liberty."  And  now  Bonaparte  was 
howing  himself  the  abettor  of  slavery  in  its  vulgarest  form — 
he  buying  and  selling  of  the  African  negro.  The  heroic 
Toussaint  I'Ouverture"  had  cleared  the  horror  out  of  Hayti, 
lid  won  San  Domingo  for  libertarian  France.  At  the  Peace 
f  Amiens  Napoleon  re-imposed  slavery  on  San  Domingo,  and 
^oussaint,  resisting  the  edict,  was  seized  and  thrown  into  a 
'rench  dungeon  even  after  he  had  at  last  yielded.  Words- 
worth, not  knowing  the  place  of  his  fate,  but  only  that  the 
ly^rant's  foot  was  on  his  neck,  bids  him  to  "  wear  a  cheerful 
TOW  "  in  his  chains,  and  to  live  in  the  greatness  of  his  soul. 

"  Thou  hast  left  behind 
Powers  that  will  work  for  thee  :  air,  earth,  and  skies ; 
There's  not  a  breathing  of  the  common  wind 
That  will  forget  thee  ;  thou  hast  great  allies  ; 
Thy  friends  are  exultations,  agonies. 
And  love,  and  man's  unconquerable  mind." 

More  and  more  clearly  his  own  country  stood  out  in  the 
loet's  imagination  as  the  symbol  and  exemplar  of  the  liberty 
hich  was  passing  away  from  France  and  the  Continent.  And 
was  a  liberty  of  genuine  morality ;  the  freedom  of  the  self- 
ossessed  and  self-possessing  soul.  But  was  the  soul  sound  ? 
/hen  Wordsworth  re-crossed  the  Channel  and  contrasted  the 


188  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

''vanity  and  parade"  of  London  and  other  English  towns  wi 
the  look  of  quiet  and  desolation  in  France,  he  trembled  ev( 
for  England.  Was  not  the  canker  of  plutocracy  already  eatii 
at  her  heart  ? 

"  The  wealthiest  man  among  us  is  the  best. 
Plain  hving  and  high  thinking  are  no  more." 

It  was  now,  in  this  moment  of  deep  indignation  and  anxio 
fear,  that  he  wrote  sonnets — three  of  which  are  perhaps  f 
greatest  even  he  ever  wrote — sonnets  of  commemoration  a; 
challenge,  not  without  echo  surely  in  the  thunders  of  Trafalg 
and  Waterloo,  which  are  too  great  to  be  omitted  or  curtail 
in  any  book  that  would  show  Wordsworth  as  he  was. 

"  Milton  !  thou  should'st  be  living  at  this  hour  : 
England  hath  need  of  thee  :  she  is  a  fen 
Of  stagnant  waters  :  altar,  sword,  and  pen, 
Fireside,  the  heroic  wealth  of  hall  and  bower, 
Have  forfeited  their  ancient  English  dower 
Of  inward  happiness.     We  are  selfish  men  ; 
Oh !  raise  us  up,  return  to  us  again  ; 
And  give  us  manners,  virtue,  freedom,  power. 
Thy  soul  was  like  a  Star,  and  dwelt  apart : 
Thou  hadst  a  voice  whose  sound  was  like  the  sea  : 
Pure  as  the  naked  heavens,  majestic,  free, 
So  didst  thou  travel  on  life's  common  way, 
In  cheerful  godliness  ;  and  yet  thy  heart 
The  lowliest  duties  on  herself  did  lay." 

"  It  is  not  to  be  thought  of  that  the  Flood 
Of  British  freedom,  which,  to  the  open  sea 
Of  the  world's  praise,  from  dark  antiquity 
Hath  flowed,  *with  pomp  of  waters,  unwithstood. 
Roused  though  it  be  full  often  to  a  mood 
Which  spurns  the  check  of  salutary  bands. 
That  this  most  famous  Stream  in  bogs  and  sands 
Should  perish  ;  and  to  evil  and  to  good 
Be  lost  for  ever.     In  our  halls  is  hung 
Armoury  of  the  invincible  Knights  of  old  : 
We  must  be  free  or  die,  who  speak  the  tongue 
That  Shakespeare  spake  ;  the  faith  and  morals  hold 
Which  Milton  held. — In  every  thing  we  are  sprung 
Of  Earth's  first  blood,  have  titles  manifold." 

"  When  I  have  borne  in  memory  what  has  tamed 
Great  Nations,  how  ennobling  thoughts  depart 
When  men  change  swords  for  ledgers,  and  desert 


THE  POET  AS   CRITIC   AND  POLITICIAN       189 

The  student's  bower  for  gold,  some  fears  unnamed 

I  had,  my  Country  ! — am  I  to  be  blamed  ? 

Now,  when  I  think  of  thee,  and  what  thou  art, 

Verily,  in  the  bottom  of  my  heart. 

Of  those  unfilial  fears  I  am  ashamed. 

For  dearly  must  we  prize  thee  ;  we  who  find 

In  thee  a  bulwark  for  the  cause  of  men  ; 

And  I  by  my  affection  was  beguiled  : 

What  wonder  if  a  Poet  now  and  then, 

Among  the  many  movements  of  his  mind, 

Felt  for  thee  as  a  lover  or  a  child  !  " 

It  is  easy  to  understand  how  Wordsworth  greeted  the 
ipanish  national  uprising  in  which  at  last  the  sotil  of  Europe 
egan  to  revive,  and  how  he  hailed  England's  intervention  in 
le  Peninsula.  The  great  year  was  1808  ;  Wordsworth  moved 
•cm  the  too  narrow  bounds  of  Dove  Cottage  into  the  more 
pacious  Allan  Bank  in  June ;  and  there,  in  his  inland  dale  he 
:ood,  eagerly  watching  the  sunrise  of  liberty.  The  newspaper 
as  brought  from  Keswick  :  the  poet  would  often  go  to  meet 
|;  at  the  top  of  the  Raise  at  two  in  the  morning.  In  August 
'imeiro  was  fought ;  but,  as  the  autumn  deepened,  the  prospect 
rew  clouded.  Wordsworth  felt  that  the  ministries  of  Nature 
bout  him  in  Westmorland  made  his  political  insight  clear. 

^*  Not  'mid  the  world's  vain  objects  that  enslave 
The  free-born  Soul— that  World  whose  vaunted  skill 
In  selfish  interest  perverts  the  will. 
Whose  factions  lead  astray  the  wise  and  brave — 
Not  there  ;  but  in  dark  wood  and  rocky  cave, 
And  hollow  vale  which  foaming  torrents  fill 
With  omnipresent  murmur  as  they  rave 
Down  their  steep  beds,  that  never  shall  be  still  : 
Here,  mighty  Nature  !  in  this  school  sublime 
I  weigh  the  hopes  and  fears  of  suffering  Spain  ; 
For  her  consult  the  auguries  of  time, 
And  through  the  human  heart  explore  my  way ; 
And  look  and  listen — gathering,  whence  I  may, 
Triumph,  and  thoughts  no  bondage  can  restrain." 

Ls  he  listened  to  the  raving  of  the  autumnal  wind,  the  poet, 
'ke  Shelley   afterwards,  heard    in  it   not  only  a  dirge,  but  a 
romise    and    a    prophecy,    telling    of   *' bright   calms"    that 
lould  succeed. 
He  wrote  not  sonnets  only  that  autumn  and  winter  at  Allan 


190  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS  CIRCLE 


Bank.  The  splendid  beginning  of  British  intervention  in  the 
Peninsula,  marked  by  the  battle  of  Vimeiro,  was  spoiled  by  th 
so-called  Convention  of  Cintra,  by  which  the  French  werr 
conducted  scathless  out  of  Portugal  at  British  expense.  Th 
English  nation  was  astonished  and  indignant  at  such  apparen 
pusillanimity,  and  a  court  of  inquiry  was  held.  Wordsworth 
as  he  wrote  to  Southey,  was  filled  with  detestation  and  abhor 
rence  of  the  Convention.  The  authors  of  it  showed  their  failun 
to  understand  the  essential  novelty  of  the  situation — namely,  th( 
substitution  of  national  for  merely  governmental  opposition  t( 
Napoleon.  Napoleon  himself,  naturally  enough,  '*  had  committee 
a  capital  blunder  in  supposing  that  when  he  had  intimidatec 
the  Sovereigns  of  Europe  he  had  conquered  the  several  nations. 
But  it  was  disgraceful  that  a  "  child  of  Liberty  "  like  Englam 
should  make  the  same  mistake.  "  As  far  as  those  men  [th< 
authors  of  the  Convention  of  Cintra]  could,  they  put  an  extin 
guisher  upon  the  star  which  was  then  rising." 

In  these  winter  months  Wordsworth  relieved  his  mind  b] 
writing   a   pamphlet,  which  was   published    in    the   spring  o 
1809.     It  had  one  of  the  interminable  titles  beloved  of  seriou;' 
and   solid   persons  in  those  days,  which  in  this  case  is  wortl' 
citing,   because    it   summarizes   the   substance    of    the    essay 
"  Concerning  the  relations  of  Great  Britain,  Spain,  and  Portugal*  ^ 
to  each  other,  and  to  the  common   enemy   at   this  crisis,  anc'' 
specifically    as    affected    by    the    Convention    of  Cintra ;  th(*v 
whole  brought  to  the  test  of  those  principles  by  which  alon('| 
the  independence  and  freedom  of  nations  can  be  preserved  01' t 
recovered."  ^1 

"  TJie  independence  and  freedom  of  nations :  "  the  essay  glow.'*} 
with  this  theme  like  a  fire   fed  with   rich   fuel.      Wordswortll 
knew  that   he  must  seem  inconsistent :  in  1793   he   had   beer'f 
shaken  and   soured   by   the  hostility    of  England  to  France  \ 
why  was  he  now  so  eager  to  push  hostility  to  France  beyonc'^ 
the    limits    of  humanity   and    worldly   policy }    Because,   he 
answered,  in  the  second  war  the  persons  were  changed,  but  the 
struggle,  the   enemy,  were   the   same  in  both  conflicts.     The'r 
struggle  was  for  liberty ;  the  enemy  was  "  the  spirit  of  selfish 
tyranny    and    lawless    ambition."      Napoleon   was    not   really 
France ;  the  French  government,  even  the  French  army,  was 
not  the  French  people.       Napoleon's  power,  though  parading- [^ 


!: 


THE   POET  AS   CRITIC  AND   POLITICIAN       191 

5  that  of  the  nation,  was  as  evil  a  thing,  wherever  it 
stablished  itself,  as  any  monarchical  or  aristocratic  abuse 
f  the  ancien  regime. 

Wordsworth's  horror  at  the  Convention  of  Cintra  was  thus 
Dt  only  consistent,  but  homogeneous,  with  his  horror  at  the 
ar  which  began  in  1793  ;  and  his  nature  was  as  passionately 
;;irred  in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other.  Only  in  his  anti- 
japoleonic  crusade  he  was  full  of  wholesome  hope,  and  felt 
imself  supported  by  the  best  sentiment  of  his  fellow-citizens, 
'e  was,  as  he  expressed  it,  drawing  out  "to  open  day  the 
luth  from  its  recesses  "  in  their  minds.  He  was  standing  for 
'moral  "  against  "mechanic"  power;  for  soul  against  body;  for 
*:he  purest  hopes  "  against  ''  purblind  calculation " ;  for  the 
f nighty  engines  of  Nature"  against  the  "base  and  puny  tools 
ad  implements  of  policy."  And  seldom  has  a  finer  hymn  of 
utionality  been  sung  than  in  these  prose  sentences  :  "  There 
ino  middle  course :  two  masters  cannot  be  served  !  Justice  must 
t;her  be  enthroned  above  might,  and  the  moral  law  take  place 
C:  the  edicts  of  selfish  passion  ;  or  the  heart  of  the  people, 
yiich  alone  can  sustain  the  efforts  of  the  people,  will  languish  ; 
teir  desires  will  not  spread  beyond  the  plough  and  the  loom, 
te  field  and  the  fireside  ;  the  sword  will  appear  to  them  an 
eiblem  of  no  promise ;  an  instrument  of  no  hope  ;  an  object 
c  indifference,  or  disgust,  or  fear.  Was  there  ever — since  the 
erliest  actions  of  men  which  have  been  transmitted  by  affec- 
ti'uate  tradition,  or  recorded  by  faithful  history,  or  sung  to  the 
impassioned  harp  of  poetry — was  there  ever  a  people  who 
p2sented  themselves  to  the  reason  and  the  imagination,  as 
uder  more  holy  influences  than  the  dwellers  upon  the  Southern 
Iininsula ;  as  roused  more  instantaneously  from  a  deadly 
s  ep  to  a  more  hopeful  wakefulness ;  as  a  mass  fluctuates 
vi;h  one  motion  under  the  breath  of  a  mightier  wind ;  as 
biaking  themselves  up,  and  settling  into  several  bodies,  in  more 
hrmonious  order  ;  as  reunited  and  embattled  under  a  standard 
wich  was  reared  to  the  sun  with  more  authentic  assurance  of 
fill  victory  ?  Let  the  fire,  which  is  never  wholly  to  be  extin- 
g  shed,  break  out  afresh  ;  let  but  the  human  creature  be 
nised  ;  whether  he  have  lain  heedless  and  torpid  in  religious  or 
ciil  slavery — have  languished  under  a  thraldom,  domestic  or 
fceign,  or  under  both  these  alternately — or  have  drifted  about 


192  WORDSWORTH   AND    HIS   CIRCLE 

a  helpless  member  of  a  class  of  disjointed  and  feeble  barbarian 
— let  him  rise  and  act ;  and  his  domineering  imagination,  b 
which  from  childhood  he  has  been  betrayed,  and  the  debasin 
affections  which  it  has  imposed  upon  him,  -"vill  from  tha 
moment  participate  the  dignity  of  the  newly  ennobled  bein 
whom  they  will  now  acknowledge  for  their  master.  .  .  .  Sti 
more  inevitable  and  momentous  are  the  results,  when  the  ind 
vidual  knows  that  the  fire  ...  is  not  less  living  in  the  breasts  ( 
his  associates  ;  and  sees  the  signs  and  testimonies  of  his  ow 
power,  incorporated  with  those  of  a  growing  multitude,  and  nc 
to  be  distinguished  from  them,  accompany  him  wherever  h 
moves.  ...  If  the  object  contended  for  be  worthy  and  trul 
great  ...  if  cruelties  have  been  committed  upon  an  ancient  an 
venerable  people,  which  'shake  the  human  frame  with  horror 
if  not  alone  the  life  which  is  sustained  by  the  bread  of  th 
mouth,  but  that — without  which  there  is  no  life — the  life  in  th 
soul,  has  been  directly  and  mortally  warred  against  .  .  .  the 
does  intense  passion,  consecrated  by  a  sudden  revelation  ^ 
justice,  give  birth  to  those  higher  and  better  wonders  which 
have  described  ;  and  exhibit  true  miracles  to  the  eyes  of  me 
and  the  noblest  which  can  be  seen."  Before  the  poet's  imagin. 
tion  hung  the  vision  of  the  Spanish  Power  in  two  hemisphere 
poised,  in  an  awful  instant  of  destiny,  and  with  one  hope  . 
salvation,  between  an  effete  monarchy  and  a  new  tyrann 
England  to  the  rescue,  could  but  England  be  true  to  hersel 
"  Reflect  upon  what  was  the  temper  and  condition  of  t\ 
Southern  Peninsula  of  Europe — the  noble  temper  of  the  peop 
of  this  mighty  island,  sovereigns  of  the  all-embracing  ocear 
think  also  of  the  condition  of  so  vast  a  region  in  the  Westei 
continent  and  its  islands  ;  and  we  shall  have  cause  to  fear  th 
ages  may  pass  away  before  a  conjunction  of  things,  so  marve 
lously  adapted  to  ensure  prosperity  to  virtue,  shall  present  itse 
again.  It  could  scarcely  be  spoken  of  as  being  to  the  wishes  ^ 
men — it  was  so  far  beyond  their  hopes.  The  government  whic 
had  been  exercised  under  the  name  of  the  old  Monarchy  ^ 
Spain — this  government,  imbecile  even  to  dotage,  whose  ver 
selfishness  was  destitute  of  vigour,  had  been  removed  ;  take 
laboriously  and  foolishly  by  the  plotting  Corsican  to  his  ow 
bosom  ;  in  order  that  the  world  might  see  ...  to  what  degn 
a  man  of  bad  principles  is  despicable-  though  of  great  power- 


THE  POET  AS  CRITIC  AND  POLITICIAN       193 

working  blindly  against  his  own  purposes."  The  opportunity 
for  beneficent  intervention  was  made  as  much  by  the  stupidity  as 
by  the  genius  of  the  tyranny.  "  It  was  a  high  satisfaction  to 
behold  demonstrated  ...  to  what  a  narrow  domain  of  know- 
ledge the  intellect  of  a  Tyrant  must  be  confined  ;  that,  if  the  gate 
by  which  wisdom  enters  has  never  been  opened,  that  of  policy 
will  surely  find  moments  when  it  will  shut  itself  against  its 
pretended  master  imperiously  and  obstinately.  To  the  eyes  of 
the  very  peasant  in  the  field,  this  sublime  truth  was  laid  open — 
not  only  that  a  Tyrant's  domain  of  knowledge  is  narrow,  but 
melancholy  as  narrow ;  inasmuch  as — from  all  that  is  lovely, 
dignified,  or  exhilarating  in  the  prospect  of  human  nature — he 
is  inexorably  cut  off  ;  and  therefore  he  is  inwardly  helpless 
.1  and  forlorn." 

In  all  this  there  is  surely  no  "  reaction  "  ;  there  is  nothing 

^vhich   the  most  modern  *'  Liberalism  "  need    disavow.      Two 

^ears  after   the  Convention  of   Cintra,  while  Wellington  was 

plodding  on  through  the  Peninsular  campaigns,  with  the  issue 

ioubtful  and  opposition  keen,  an  eminent  "  Jingo "  of  his  day, 

sir  Charles  Pasley,  of  the  Royal  Engineers,  wrote  a  pamphlet 

)n    Military  Policy  and  Instittitions    of  the  British    Empirey 

1,  vhich  moved  Wordsworth  to  a  rejoinder.     Pasley  maintained 

hat  Britain,  if  she  was  to  overthrow  Napoleon,  ought  to  follow 

lis  example  by  winning  a  basis  of  power  on  the  Continent. 

Against   this  view  Wordsworth  raised   again   his   standard   of 

atipnal  independence,  of  popular  self-government.     He  rested 

is  hopes,  he  wrote  to  Pasley,  "with  respect  to  the  emancipa- 

on  of  Europe,  upon  moral  influence,  and  the  wishes  and  opinions 

f  the  respective  nations."   "  You  treat,"  he  went  on,  "  of  conquest 

^-^f  conquest  could   in    itself,  nakedly  and  abstractedly  con- 

dered,  confer  rights.     If  we  once  admit  this  proposition,  all 

lorality  is  driven  out  of  the  world.  ...  I  think  there  is  nothing 

e  unfortunate  for  Europe  than  the  condition  of  Germany 

d  Italy  in  these  respects  [their  divided  state].      Could  the 

riers  be  dissolved  which  have  divided  the  one  nation  into 

eapolitans,   Tuscans,    Venetians,    etc.,    and    the    other    into 

ssians,  Hanoverians,  etc.,  and  could  they  once  be  taught  to 

1  their  strength,  the  French  would  be  driven  back  into  their 

land  immediately.    I  wish  to  see  Spain,  Italy,  France,  Ger- 

ny  formed  into  independent  nations.  .  .  .    England  requires 

o 


■ 


194  WORDSWORTH  AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

as  you  have  shown  so  eloquently  and  ably,  a  new  system 
of  martial  policy  ;  but  England,  as  well  as  the  rest  of  Europe, 
requires  what  is  more  difficult  to  give  it, — a  new  course  of 
education,  a  higher  tone  of  moral  feeling,  more  of  the  grandeur 
of  the  imaginative  faculties,  and  less  of  the  petty  processes  that 
would  manage  the  concerns  of  nations  in  the  same  calculating 
spirit  with  which  it  would  set  about  building  a  house." 

Two  sonnets,  both  written  in  1811,  may  fix  for  us  more  per- 
manently than  any  prose  extracts  the  key  of  Wordsworth's 
politics  in  this,  their  anti-Napoleonic  strain. 

"The  power  of  Armies  is  a  visible  thing, 
Formal,  and  circumscribed  in  time  and  space  ; 
But  who  the  Hmits  of  that  power  shall  trace 
Which  a  brave  People  into  light  can  bring 
Or  hide,  at  will, — for  freedom  combating 
By  just  revenge  inflamed  ?     No  foot  may  chase, 
No  eye  can  follow,  to  a  fatal  place 
That  power,  that  spirit,  whether  on  the  wing 
Like  the  strong  wind,  or  sleeping  like  the  wind 
Within  its  awful  caves. — From  year  to  year 
Springs  this  indigenous  produce  far  and  near ; 
No  craft  this  subtle  element  can  bind. 
Rising  like  water  from  the  soil,  to  find 
In  every  nook  a  lip  that  it  may  cheer." 

"  Here  pause  :  the  poet  claims  at  least  this  praise,  : 

That  virtuous  Liberty  hath  been  the  scope 
Of  his  pure  song,  which  did  not  shrink  from  hope 
In  the  worst  moment  of  these  evil  days  ; 
From  hope,  the  paramount  dicty  that  Heaven  lays, 
For  its  own  honour,  on  man's  suffering  heart. 
Never  may  from  our  souls  one  truth  depart — 
That  an  accursed  thing  it  is  to  gaze 
On  prosperous  tyrants  with  a  dazzled  eye  ; 
Nor — touched  with  due  abhorrence  of  their  guilt 
For  whose  dire  ends  tears  flow,  and  blood  is  spilt. 
And  justice  labours  in  extremity — 
Forget  thy  weakness,  upon  which  is  built, 
O  wretched  man,  the  throne  of  tyranny  !  " 

If  political  reaction  came,  if  Wordsworth  ever  became  i 
any  sense  a  "  lost  leader,"  it  was  in  a  later  chapter  of  his  life. 


CHAPTER   IX 
THOMAS    DE   QUINCEY 

WORDSWORTH'S  tract  on  the  Convention  of  Cintra  was 
revised  and  prepared  for  the  press  by  a  young  man  of 
letters  whom  he  had  not  known  very  long,  but  whose  gifts  he 
already  rated  very  highly.  Thomas  de  Quincey  is,  and  must 
always  remain,  one  of  the  most  vivid  and  remarkable  of  all  the 
members  of  Wordsworth's  circle,  though  it  seems  doubtful  where 
he  may  ultimately  stand  among  English  prose  classics.  As  to 
his  early  discipleship  of  Wordsworth,  at  all  events,  and  his 
competence  to  understand  him  and  to  mediate  between  him  and 
intellectual  England,  there  can  be  no  doubt.  De  Quincey,  a 
strange,  delicate,  wayward,  clever,  well-read  boy,  with  precocious 
skill  in  Greek,  came  across  Lyrical  Ballads  in  1799,  at  Bath.  Two 
years  later,  when  he  was  sixteen,  he  read  Ruth  in  a  London 
newspaper,  into  which  it  had  been  copied  ;  and  these  first 
tastings  of  the  new  poetry  were  an  intoxication.  In  1803  he 
went  up  to  Worcester  College,  Oxford,  at  the  ordinary  age  of 
eighteen,  and  had  already  received  a  precious  letter  from  Words- 
worth, a  letter  of  kindly  sympathy  in  reply  to  the  enthusiastic 
and  irrepressible  outpourings  of  an  admiring  reader.  During 
the  extraordinary  years  before  De  Quincey's  matriculation,  the 
three  years  at  Manchester  Grammar  School,  ending  with  the 
picturesque  flight  in  the  sunlit  silence  of  an  early  July  morning 
so  well  known  to  all  readers  of  the  Opium-Eater  ;  the  wander- 
ings in  Wales  ;  the  squalid  months  in  rat-haunted  London 
rooms,  and  among  the  perils  of  nocturnal  Oxford  Street ; 
mixing  strangely  with  the  earliest  pleasures  of  opium,  there 
was  burning  and  growing  in  the  boy's  nature  a  pure  intellectual 
passion,  a  **  nympholepsy,"  as  he  called  it,  in  his  pedantic  way, 
of   which    Wordsworth  —  Wordsworth    idealized    among    his 

195 


196  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

mountains — was  the  source  and  the  object.  In  his  first  long 
walk  from  Manchester  to  Chester,  the  runaway  was  full  of  Ruth. 
With  "an  elaborate  and  pompous  sunset"  in  front  of  him 
hanging  over  the  mountains  of  North  Wales,  he  thought  of  the 
American  lake  described  to  Ruth  by  her  lover — 

"  With  all  its  fairy  crowds 
Of  islands  that  together  lie 
As  quietly  as  spots  of  sky 
Among  the  evening  clouds." 

At  that  moment,  as  he  somewhat  theatrically  puts  it,  he 
alone  "  in  all  Europe  "  was  quoting  from  Wordsworth.  That 
might  be  rather  difficult  to  prove,  but,  at  least,  it  seems  certain 
that  he  alone,  or  all  but  alone — for  was  not  "  Christopher  North," 
albeit  somewhat  doubtingly,  with  him  ? — among  Wordsworthian 
readers  and  critics  was  intellectually  in  love  with  Wordsworth, 
smitten  and  subdued  and  modified  by  the  mere  charm  of  his 
verse.  The  poet  was  to  him  a  hero  to  be  looked  at,  a  god  to 
be  sought  and  worshipped.  Among  the  kindnesses  in  Words- 
worth's first  letters  was  a  frank  invitation  to  visit  him  at  Gras- 
mere,  and  the  boy  was  at  once  eager  and  afraid  to  go.  Before 
he  had  written  to  Wordsworth,  when  he  was  planning  his  escape 
from  Manchester,  he  had  thought  of  making  for  the  Lakes, 
drawn  thither  by  "a  secret  fascination,  subtle,  sweet,  fantastic, 
and  spiritually  strong."  As  a  Manchester  child,  he  had  always 
been  near  them,  and  his  imagination  had  been  introduced  to 
them  by  Mrs.  Radcliffe.  Then  came  the  Wordsworthian  engoiie- 
ment.  But  that  very  engouement  restrained  as  much  as  it 
impelled  the  impecunious  fugitive  from  school.  "  The  very 
depth  of  the  impressions  which  had  been  made  upon  me,  either 
as  regarded  the  poetry  or  the  scenery,  was  too  solemn  and 
(unaffectedly  I  may  say  it)  too  spiritual,  to  clothe  itself  in  any 
hasty  or  chance  movement  as  at  all  adequately  expressing  its 
strength,  or  reflecting  its  hallowed  character.  If  you,  reader, 
were  a  devout  Mahometan,  throwing  gazes  of  mystical  awe 
daily  towards  Mecca,  or  were  a  Christian  devotee  looking  with  ' 
the  same  rapt  adoration  to  St.  Peter's  at  Rome,  or  to  El  Kodah 
— the  Holy  City  of  Jerusalem — (so  called  even  amongst  the. 
Arabs,  who  hate  both  Christian  and  Jew),  how  painfully  would 
it  jar  upon  your  sensibilities,  if  some  friend,  sweeping  past  you 
upon  a  high  road,  with  a  train  (according  to  the  circumstances) 


THOMAS   DE   QUINCEY  197 

of  dromedaries  or  of  wheel  carriages,  should  suddenly  pull  up, 
and  say,  *  Come,  old  fellow,  jump  up  alongside  of  me,  I'm  off  for 
the  Red  Sea,  and  here's  a  spare  dromedary  ;'  or  *  off  for  Rome, 
and  here's  a  well-cushioned  barouche  ; '  seasonable  and  con- 
venient it  might  happen  that  the  invitation  were  ;  but  still  it 
would  shock  you  that  a  journey  which,  with  or  without  your 
consent,  could  not  hit  assume  the  character  eventually  of  a 
saintly  pilgrimage,  should  arise  and  take  its  initial  movement 
upon  a  casual  summons,  or  upon  a  vulgar  opening  of  momentary 
convenience."  If  he  could  ever  dare  to  present  himself  to 
Wordsworth,  it  must  be  in  circumstances  very  different  from 
those  in  which  he  was  running  away  from  school,  without  money, 
and  in  disgrace.  His  first  crop  of  wild  oats  once  sown,  however, 
once  a  member  of  the  University  of  Oxford  and  Commoner  of 
Worcester,  De  Quincey  was  respectable  enough  to  bethink  him- 
self of  entering  any  presence.  Nor  did  his  interest  in  the 
Romantic  Revival,  and  his  passionate  feeling  for  Wordsworth 
and  the  Lakes  diminish  while  he  was  at  Oxford,  On  the 
contrary,  his  desultory  studies  there  were  largely  in  English 
literature  ;  and,  such  was  his  critical  discernment,  that  English 
literature  meant  for  him  not  only  Chaucer,  Spenser,  Shake- 
esispeare,  Milton,  but,  beyond  all  cavil  or  question,  Wordsworth 
til  and  Coleridge  also.  And  as  for  the  Wordsworthian  engotiement^ 
there  was  no  sign  of  its  diminishing.  "Extinguished  such  a 
passion  could  not  be.  .  .  .  The  very  names  of  the  ancient  hills 
— Fairfield,  Seat  Sandal,  Helvellyn,  Blencathara,  Glaramara  ; 
the  names  of  the  sequestered  glens — such  as  Borrowdale,  Martin- 
ei|  dale,  Mardale,  Wastdale,  and  Ennerdale ;  but,  above  all,  the 
shy  pastoral  recesses  .  .  .  Grasmere,  for  instance,  the  lonely 
abode  of  the  poet  himself,  solitary,  and  yet  sowed,  as  it  were, 
with  a  thin  diffusion  of  humble  dwellings — here  a  scattering, 
and  there  a  clustering,  as  in  the  starry  heavens  ,  .  .  these  were 
so  many  local  spells  upon  me,  equally  poetic  and  elevating  with 
the  Miltonic  names  of  Valdarno  and  Vallombrosa."  And  under 
(filjthese  spells,  strengthening  rather  than  weakening,  that  most 
^  unusual  of  undergraduates  walked  about  the  Oxford  streets  and 
the  Worcester  college  gardens. 

In  the  course  of  vacation-rambles,  De  Quincey  twice  got  as 
near  Grasmere  as  Coniston  ;  but  as  yet  he  got  no  further. 
"Once  I  absolutely  went  forwards  from  Coniston  to  the  very 


k 


198  WORDSWORTH  AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

gorge  of  Hammerscar,  from  which  the  whole  Vale  of  Grasmere 
suddenly  breaks  upon  the  view  .  .  .  with  its  lovely  valley 
stretching  before  the  eye  in  the  distance,  the  lake  lying  imme- 
diately below,  with  its  solemn  ark-like  island  .  .  .  seemingly 
floating  on  its  surface.  ...  In  one  quarter,  a  little  wood  .  .  . 
more  directly  in  opposition  to  the  spectator,  a  few  green  fields  ; 
and  beyond  them,  just  two  bowshots  from  the  water,  a  little 
white  cottage  gleaming  from  the  midst  of  trees,  with  a  vast  and 
seemingly  never-ending  series  of  ascents,  rising  above  it  to  the 
height  of  more  than  three  thousand  feet.  That  little  cottage 
was  Wordsworth's.  .  .  .  Catching  one  hasty  glimpse  of  this 
loveliest  of  landscapes,  I  retreated  like  a  guilty  thing,  for  fear 
I  might  be  surprised  by  Wordsworth,  and  then  returned,  faint- 
heartedly, to  Coniston,  and  so  to  Oxford,  re  infectdr 

De  Quincey  crowned  his  academic  queerness  by  absconding 
in  the  middle  of  the  examination  for  his  degree.  That  may 
have  been  in  1807,  though  there  is  no  certainty  about  the  matter. 
Certain  it  is,  however,  that  in  1807  he  first  saw  Wordsworth. 
Earlier  in  the  same  year  he  first  saw  Coleridge,  and  it  was 
through  Coleridge  that  he  came  eye  to  eye  with  Coleridge's 
great  collaborator  in  Lyrical  Ballads,  Coleridge,  indeed,  shared 
the  hero-worship  he  bestowed  on  Wordsworth,  not  only  because 
of  his  poetry,  but  also  because  of  his  addiction  to  German  philo- 
sophy, one  of  De  Ouincey's  miscellaneous  pursuits.  Coleridge, 
De  Quincey  seems  to  have  been  readier  to  face  than  Words- 
worth ;  and  he  was  much  disappointed  that  he  was  away  in 
Malta  from  April,  1804,  to  August,  1806.  He  even  had  thoughts 
of  going  to  Malta  to  gratify  his  longing,  but  he  decided  to  wait. 
In  1807  Coleridge  was  in  the  west  country.  From  Bristol  to 
Bridgwater  went  De  Quincey  one  summer  day,  bound  for  Tom 
Poole's  at  Nether  Stowey.  Poole  he  found,  and  was  delighted 
with  the  *'  stout,  plain-looking  farmer,"  in  his  "  rustic,  old- 
fashioned  house,"  with  its  splendid  library  ;  but  the  incalculable 
S.  T.  C.  was  away  on  a  visit.  De  Quincey  stayed  with  Poole 
a  day  or  two  "  until  his  [Coleridge's]  motions  should  be  ascer- 
tained " — always  a  difficult  matter.  For  days  they  were  un- 
ascertainable.  Then  De  Quincey  went  over  to  Bridgwater  to 
see  whether  he  could  find  his  prize ;  and  there,  sure  enough, 
under  an  archway  in  the  main  street,  stood  the  man.  "  In 
height  he  might  seem  to  be  about  five  feet  eight  (he  was,  in 


THOMAS  DE   QUINCEY  199 

reality,  about  an  inch  and  a  half  taller,  but  his  figure  was  of  an 
order  which  drowns  the  height) ;  his  person  was  broad  and  full, 
and  tended  even  to  corpulence  ;  his  complexion  was  fair,  though 
not  what  painters  technically  style  fair,  because  it  was  associated 
with  black  hair ;  his  eyes  were  large  and  soft  inl  their  expres- 
sion ;  and  it  was  from  the  peculiar  appearance  of  haze  or 
dreaminess  which  mixed  with  their  light  that  I  recognized  my 
object." 

In  the  autumn,  De  Quincey  met  Coleridge  at  Bristol,  heard 
from  him  that  he  was  to  be  lecturing  in  London  in  the  follow- 
ing winter,  and  offered  to  escort  his  wife  and  family  to  Keswick 
to  their  winter  quarters  at  Greta  Hall.  The  fateful  moment 
had  arrived.  The  escort  was  accepted ;  and  in  October  the 
party — Mrs.  Coleridge,  Hartley,  aged  nine,  Derwent,  two  years 
younger,  and  Sara,  two  years  younger  still — set  out  with  De 
Quincey,  aged  twenty-two,  in  a  post-chaise,  the  horses'  heads 
turned  towards  the  North. 

North,  with  the  minimum  of  deflection,  the  travellers  went, 
by  Gloucester,  Bridgnorth,  Liverpool,  Lancaster,  until,  one 
afternoon  about  three,  they  found  themselves  changing  horses 
for  the  last  time  at  quiet  Ambleside,  at  the  gate  of  Paradise. 
There,  in  the  still  bright  afternoon,  along  the  road  we  know, 
across  Pelter  Bridge,  along  Rydal  mere,  and  over  "  White-moss," 
with  the  view  into  Grasmere,  before  the  final  dip  to  the  lake  ancj 
Wordsworth's  door.  De  Quincey  and  the  two  boys  walk  up  the 
hill,  of  course ;  and  from  the  top  they  are  minded  to  go  down 
at  a  run,  leaving  the  chaise  to  grind  over  the  rough  road  at  its 
own  pace. 

"  0  moment,  one  and  infinite ! " 

What  is  this  cottage  with  the  white  walls,  and  the  yew-trees 
in  front,  that  at  a  turn  of  the  road  arrests  suddenly  the 
scamperers  downhill }  Is  it  not  the  same  that  De  Quincey 
fled  from,  "like  a  guilty  thing  surprised,"  the  year  before  at 
Hammerscar?  Heavens!  it  is;  for  Hartley  turns  in  at  the 
gate.  De  Quincey  tastes  the  fearful  joys  of  hero-worship  on 
the  very  edge  of  beatific  vision.  This  time  he  will  stand  it  out ; 
he  will  not  run  away.  In  his  transport  he  forgets  his  manners  ; 
he  does  not  wait  for  the  arrival  of  the  chaise,  that  he  may  hand 
out  Mrs.  Coleridge  ;  he  hurries  in  after  Hartley,  and  has  the 
reward  of  his  long  patience. 


200  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

All  this  is  described  by  De  Quincey  with  some  artificiality 
of  manner ;  but  his  emotion,  as  every  hero-worshipper  knows, 
was  perfectly  natural,  perfectly  credible,  and  quite  ordinary. 
What  is  not  ordinary,  what  makes  the  moment  remarkable,  is 
the  electricity  that  passed  in  that  first  handshake  of  Words- 
worth and  De  Quincey,  the  instant  of  physical  contact  be- 
tween a  great  poet,  much  misunderstood,  greatly  unpopular, 
serenely,  coldly  self-centred ;  and  a  critic,  hardly  great,  but 
infinitely  ingenious,  and  with  much  in  his  power ;  a  critic, 
subtle,  sensitive,  sympathetic,  doubtfully  scrupulous  ;  accepting 
the  Romanticism  of  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth  with  all  his  ( 
heart,  and  yet  ready,  on  the  smallest  provocation,  to  lacerate  it 
here  and  there  with  his  logical  understanding,  and  in  a  fit  of  the 
spleen  to  expose  his  heroes  with  the  resources  of  a  master  of 
style. 

However,  electricity  is,  for  the  most  part,  a  secret  agency ; 
and  the  meeting  was  serene  in  itself  and  its  immediate  sequel. 
While  the  poet  was  receiving  Mrs.  Coleridge  and  Sara,  De 
Quincey  was  making  acquaintance,  inside  the  cottage,  first  with 
Mrs.  Wordsworth,  and  then  with  Dorothy.  We  already  know 
his  impression  of  the  poet's  wife.  That  of  the  "  dear,  dear 
sister,"  was  equally  vivid,  and — from  all  the  evidence  we  have — 
equally  true.  He  saw  the  eyes,  "  not  soft,  nor  fierce  and  bold,  j 
but  wild  and  startling,  and  hurried  in  their  motion."  He  saw 
the  dark  complexion,  "  gipsy  "  in  its  "  determinate  tan,"  as  of 
one  against  whom  the  "  misty  mountain  winds  "  are  "  free  to 
blow."  He  felt  the  ardour  and  sensibility  ;  he  was  conscious  of 
"some  subtle  fire  of  impassioned  intellect  .  .  .  which,  being 
alternately  pushed  forward  into  a  conspicuous  expression  by 
the  irresistible  instincts  of  her  temperament,  and  then  immedi- 
ately checked,  in  obedience  to  the  decorum  of  her  sex  and  age 
and  her  maidenly  condition,  gave  to  her  whole  demeanour,  and 
to  her  conversation,  an  air  of  embarrassment,  and  even  of  self- 
conflict,  that  was  almost  distressing  to  witness.  ...  At  times, 
the  self-counteraction  and  self-baffling  of  her  feelings  caused 
her  even  to  stammer,  and  so  determinately  to  stammer,  that  a 
stranger  who  should  have  seen  her  and  quitted  her  in  that  state 
of  feeling,  would  have  certainly  set  her  down  for  one  plagued 
with  that  infirmity  of  speech,  as  distressingly  as  Charles  Lamb 
himself."      He    thought    she   walked   with   a    too    "glancing 


THOMAS   DE   QUINCEY  SOI 

quickness/'  and  noticed  that  she  stooped.  Above  everything,  her 
wonderful  intellectual  sympathy  struck  him.  You  could  tell 
tier  nothing,  quote  nothing  to  her,  which  she  did  not  receive  so 
IS  to  give  it  a  new  interest  for  you.  "  The  pulses  of  light  are 
lot  more  quick  or  more  inevitable  in  their  flow  and  un- 
iulation,  than  were  the  answering  and  echoing  movements  of 
ler  sympathizing  attention."  This  we  can  well  believe.  And 
ve  can  also  believe  that,  though  Dorothy  had  had  more  chances 
)f  going  into  polite  society  than  Mary  Hutchinson  of  Penrith, 
hough  she  had  even  lived  "  under  the  protection  "  of  a  Canon 
)f  Windsor,  she  was  not  so  "  lady-like  "  as  Mrs.  Wordsworth. 

But  Wordsworth  himself  has  by  this  time  brought  in  Mrs. 
Coleridge,  and  they  are  standing,  we  may  hope,  by  a  good  fire. 
A^hat  did  De  Quincey  think  of  his  hero  in  the  flesh  ? 

He  thought,  in  the  first  place,  that  he  was  not  well  made, 
iis  legs,  he  thought,  were  faulty ;  his  shoulders  were  narrow 
,nd  had  a  "  droop,"  and  his  **  total  efl'ect "  was  always  worst  "  in 
.  state  of  motion."     But  his  face  was  more  satisfactory. 

"Many  such  "  [faces],  writes  De  Quincey,  "and  finer,  I  have 
een  amongst  the  portraits  of  Titian,  and,  in  a  later  period, 
.mongst  those  of  Vandyke,  from  the  great  era  of  Charles  I.,  as 
Iso  from  the  Court  of  Elizabeth  and  of  Charles  H.,  but  none 
/hich  has  more  impressed  me  in  my  own  time."  It  was  a  long 
'forth-of-England  face  ;  the  head  was  rounded  behind  as  well  as 
1  front ;  the  forehead  was  remarkable  for  its  breadth  rather  than 
:s  height.  The  eyes  were  small  and  neither  "  bright,"  "  lustrous," 
or  "  piercing "  ;  and  yet  at  times,  under  the  influence  of 
hysical  fatigue,  they  would  have  a  look  "  the  most  solemn  and 
piritual  that  it  is  possible  for  the  human  ,eye  to  wear."  The 
ose,  as  all  portraits  show,  was  large  arid  arched,  indicating, 
)e  Quincey  thinks,  a  strong  animal  basis  of  temperament.  The 
louth  was  not  remarkable,  but  its  "  circumjacencies "  were : 
lere  was  a  "swell  and  protrusion  of  the  parts  above  and 
round  "  the  lips,  which  reminded  De  Quincey  of  Milton's  mouth, 
specially  as  it  appears  in  the  crayon  drawing  of  Milton,  engraved 
y  Richardson,  whose  verisimilitude  was  eagerly  attested  by 
niton's  daughter.  In  other  respects,  De  Quincey  thought  that 
/ordsworth's  face  was  like  Milton's  ;  in  the  droop  of  the  eye- 
ds,  and  the  lie  of  the  hair  on  the  brow. 

De  Quincey's  Wordsworthian  fruition,  the  seeing  of  his  hero 


202  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE  ^ 

face  to  face,  produced,  he  tells  us,  a  change  "in  the  physica 
condition  of  his  nervous  system."  This  is  a  grand  way  of  sayins 
that,  after  he  had  seen  and  spoken  to  Wordsworth,  he  was  m 
longer  afraid  of  seeing  and  speaking  to  him.  He  regarded  hin 
henceforward  as,  like  Milton's  Raphael,  an  *'  affable  angel,  wh' 
conversed  on  the  terms  of  man  with  man."  The  first  evenin; 
passed  pleasantly ;  the  old-fashioned  lamp-lit  tea-table  of 
November  evening  was  delightful ;  and  then  Wordsworth  rea 
from  Fairfax's  Tasso  ;  and  then  "about  eleven,"  De  Quince 
found  himself  in  (presumably)  the  bedroom  which  the  Word.' 
worths  had  built.  It  was  a  narrow  squeeze  at  Dove  Cottag 
when  there  were  guests  ;  and  in  the  morning  De  Quince 
discovered  (he  seems  to  have  been  too  sleepy  to  discover  it  i 
night,  or  what  kind  of  light  did  he  go  to  bed  by  ?)  that 
"  cottage  bed  "  in  the  room  was  occupied  by  Wordsworth's  thre 
years'  old  boy  John,  who  woke  him  by  repeating  the  creed  a 
part  of  his  matins.  Dorothy  made  breakfast  on  that  rain 
morning ;  and  then,  in  spite  of  the  rain,  the  poet  and  his  siste 
took  De  Quincey  round  the  six-mile  circuit  of  Rydal  an 
Grasmere  lakes.  Mrs.  Coleridge  and  her  children  pursued  the 
journey  to  Keswick  ;  and  the  next  day,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Wordi 
worth  and  Dorothy  started  with  De  Quincey  on  an  expeditio 
to  see  Southey,  and  the  joint-establishment  of  Southeys  an 
Coleridges  at  Greta  Hall.  They  went  by  way  of  Ullswate 
driving  to  Ambleside  in  a  one-horse  cart  driven  by  "a  bonn: 
young  woman,"  Dorothy  scattering  genial  salutations  as  the 
rumbled  along.  On  they  went,  walking,  of  course,  up  the  stee 
ascent  of  Kirkstone  Pass ;  then,  in  the  cart  again,  down  upo, 
Brothers*  Water  and  Patterdale,  at  whose  inn  they  stopped  i 
the  moonlight.  There  a  change  of  horses  ;  and  on  "  through  thoi 
most  romantic  woods  and  rocks  of  Stybarrow — through  thoi 
silent  glens  of  Glencoin  and  Glenridding — through  .  . .  Gobarro 
Park — we  saw,  alternately,  for  four  miles,  the  most  grotesque  an 
the  most  awful  spectacles — 

*  Abbey  windows 
With  Moorish  temples  of  the  Hindoos,' 

all  fantastic,  all  as  unreal  and  shadowy  as  the  moonlight  whic- 
created  them  ;  whilst,  at  every  angle  of  the  road,  broad  glean: 
came  upwards  of  Ullswater,  stretching  for  nine  miles  nortl 
ward,  but,  fortunately  for  its  effect,  broken  into   three  water 


D 


THOMAS   DE   QUINCEY  203 

'"Ihambers  of  almost  equal  length,  and  never  all  visible  at  once." 
''"  Kt  "  Ewesmere"  (probably  Easemerehill  close  to  Pooley  Bridge) 
hey  spent  the  night,  and  there  they  left  the  ladies.  Wordsworth 
nd  his  guests  walked  on  by  Emont  Bridge  to  Penrith  ;  and  on 
^l"  hat  day  tcte-d,'tete  companionship  between  the  two  probably 
iegan ;  for  did  not  Wordsworth  read  part  of  his  White  Doe  of 
\ylstone,  hardly  yet  seriously  begun,  to  the  disciple  ? — an  incident 
most  memorable  "  to  the  critic.  De  Quincey  left  Wordsworth 
ehind  at  Penrith,  and  walked  over  the  hills  alone  by  Threlkeld 
Keswick  and  Greta  Hall,  where  Southey  and  Mrs.  Coleridge 
2ceived  him.  Thither  came  Wordsworth  the  following  day  ; 
nd  De  Quincey  watched  the  two  great  men  together,  with  eyes 
n  the  look-out,  and  ears  listening  for  mischief.  He  thought  they 
ere  not  very  friendly,  or,  at  least,  not  more  than  friendly.  In  one 
aspect,  however,  they  seemed  to  him  too  friendly,  namely,  in 
aeir  sentiments  on  public  affairs.  De  Quincey  was  an  orthodox 
'ittite ;  and  he  heard,  with  dismay,  echoes  of  unmistakable 
Jacobinism,"  as  it  seemed  to  him,  in  the  sympathetic  talk  of 
Wordsworth  and  Southey.  There  was  even  profane  jibing  at 
he  English  royal  family,  and  about  the  hopelessness  of  any  good 
Dr  England  until  they  were  expatriated,  say  to  Botany  Bay ! 
Vhat  was  a  proper  young  Oxford  Tory  to  think  of  the  con- 
enience  of  such  jesting  } 

Next  day,  the  two  pedestrians  returned  to  Dove  Cottage,  and 
he  first  chapter  of  De  Quincey's  personal  acquaintance  with 
Vordsworth  was  closed.  He  went  south,  first  to  Bristol,  and 
hen  to  London,  seeing  much  of  Coleridge,  and,  once,  giving 
he  poor  laudanum  -  dazed,  lecturing,  ambulatory  man  very 
ubstantial  pecuniary  help. 

In  June,  1808,  the  Wordsworths  made  their  flitting  from  the 
30  strait  bounds  of  Dove  Cottage  to  Allan  Bank.  As  the 
/Inter  drew  on,  and  Wordsworth  settled  down  to  the  Convention 
f  CintrUy  the  discomforts  of  a  hastily-chosen  new  house  pressed 
n  the  inhabitants.  The  chimneys  smoked  ;  the  cellars  were  wet. 
)ne  day  the  whole  household  had  to  go  to  bed  because  no  fire 
.'ould  burn  without  intolerable  smoke.  If  things  could  not  be 
emedied,  the  Wordsworths  would  have  to  leave  Grasmere,  for 
here  was  no  other  house  to  be  had.  Fortunately,  the  final 
efforts  of  the  workmen  must  have  been  rewarded  with  some 
'uccess,  for  Allan  Bank  remained  the  Wordsworth's  home  until 


204  WORDSWORTH   AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

1811.  The  first  winter  there  was  not  dull,  though  it  was  uncon- 
fortable.  The  discomfort,  indeed,  was  heightened  by  the  fac 
that  they  had  guests  during  great  part  of  the  time.  Coleridg 
was  there,  trying  to  launch  The  Friend^  and  preparing  the  firs 
number.  Coleridge  was  still  very  dear  to  the  Wordsworth: 
dear  and  worrying  and,  for  the  most  part,  grievous.  He  wa 
trying  to  do  without  opium,  and  his  London  lectures  had  nc 
been  a  failure.  Still,  he  was  in  wretched  health,  physical  an 
moral,  as,  indeed,  he  nearly  always  was.  He  was  frankl 
separated  from  his  wife  that  winter  ;  that  is,  he  lived  at  Alia 
Bank,  and  she  at  Greta  Hall,  to  their  mutual  satisfaction,  anc 
as  Dorothy  Wordsworth  hoped,  their  mutual  benefit.  "The 
are  upon  friendly  terms,"  she  wrote,  "  and  occasionally  see  eac 
other.  In  fact,  Mrs.  Coleridge  was  more  than  a  week  at  Grasmer 
under  the  same  roof  with  him."  Things  might  have  been  worse' 
then  ;  but  it  could  not  be  said  that  they  were  ideal. 

De  Quincey,  too,  was  a  guest  at  Allan   Bank  that  winter 
but   neither   from   him   nor   from   the  Wordsworths  have  an;' 
particulars  of  his  visit  come  to  us.     He  must,  however,  hav 
known    all    about   the   first  number   of   The  Friend ;    and   h 
certainly  knew  all  about  the   Convention  of  Cintra  pamphlet 
In  the   spring  of   1809  he  went  south   again,  to  Bristol  an( 
London,  to  **  eat  dinners  "  and  otherwise  make  some  kind  of  over 
tures  towards  active  life ;  and  in  London  he  saw  Wordsworth' 
pamphlet   through   the   press,  enriching  it   with  an    appendix 
and  worrying  the  printers  with  his  punctuation.     Wordswortl 
thought    De    Ouincey's  additions  "  most    masterly,"  and   wa 
very  grateful  to  his  Oxford  disciple,  in  spite  of  his  finicking' 
ways  with   colons  and  semi-colons.     All   the  foundations  of  ;■ 
close  friendship  were  being   laid.     While  De  Quincey  was  a- 
Allan  Bank,  he  was  keeping  his  eye  on   Dove  Cottage  ;  and^ 
before  he  left,  it  was  settled  that  he  was  to  be  its  next  tenant,— 
Dorothy  undei  taking  the  oversight  of  furnishing  and  the  rest  0 
it,  against  his  return  in   November.      She  enjoyed  the  work 
and  it  is  evident  that  the  coming  of  the  new  occupant  wai' 
much  looked  forward  to  in  the  Vale.     Backwards  and  forward; 
Dorothy  trudged  between  Allan  Bank  and  the  cottage  in  thai, 
spring  and  summer  of  1809  (the  great  year,  for   England,  0 
Darwin's  birth  and  Tennyson's  and  Gladstone's  ;  the  year,  also 
in  which  Byron's  English  Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers  saw  thf 


THOMAS   DE   QUINCEY  205 

ght) ;  seeing  to  the  laying  of  carpets,  the  hanging  of  curtains  ; 
ix)ve  all,  the  setting-up  of  bookshelves  for  one  of  the  most 
pokish  of  men  ;  in  that  respect,  how  unlike  her  William  !  The 
l^ordsworths  were  too  near  at  Allan  Bank  to  feel  it  any  pain  to 
f)  back  to  Dove  Cottage ;  and  Dorothy  loved  her  visits  in  De 
[uincey's  interest ;  hearing  the  cuckoo  as  of  old,  and  fancying 
jat  the  little  birds  in  the  orchard  recognized  her,  and  rejoiced 
\  the  branches  of  the  apple-trees  at  her  presence. 
I  De  Quincey's  coming,  she  felt,  would  carry  on  the  Words- 
prthian  tradition  at  the  cottage.  "  Pleasant  indeed  it  is  to 
link  of  that  little  orchard,  which  for  over  seven  years  at  least 
uch  was  the  length  of  De  Quincey's  lease]  will  be  a  secure 
)vert  for  the  birds,  and  undisturbed  by  the  woodman's  axe." 
p  Dorothy  wrote.  And  she  went  on  telling  her  "  dear  friend  " 
'  the  "  impious  strife  "  waged  that  year  by  the  said  woodman's 
«e  among  the  old  trees  on  Nab  Scar,  and  of  "the  wicked 
issions,"  uttering  themselves  in  lawsuits  and  rumours  of  law- 
lits,  that  were  let  loose  in  the  very  sanctuary  of  Nature. 

De  Ouincey  arrived,  bag  and  baggage,  in  October,  to  stay 
th  the  Wordsworths  and  bear  with  them  the  still  smoky 
limneys  of  Allan  Bank,  while  his  servant  prepared  the 
)ttage.  More  than  a  month  he  enjoyed  this  ever-ready 
>spitality — Dorothy  writing  that  he  seemed  like  one  of  the 
mily.  At  last  the  cottage  was  ready,  and  he  entered  on  his 
ng  residence  there,  his  occupancy,  with  many  long  intervals, 
r  twenty-seven  years. 

And  De  Quincey  loved  his  cottage,  well  enough,  at  least,  to 
re  there  a  great  deal,  and  to  write  about  it  in  his  most 
igaging  style.     For  his  sake,  the  reader  will  bear  to  hear  a 

;*|tle  more  about  it,  so  that  when  he  goes  to  look  at  it  he  may 

•member  that  it  has  a  complete  double  set  of  associations. 

"  Cottage  immortal  in  my  remembrance !  "  he  apostrophized 

once.    "  This  was  the  scene  of  struggles  the  most  tempestuous 

id  bitter  within  my  own  mind  :  this  the  scene  of  my  despon- 

i^ncy  and   unhappiness :  this  the  scene   of  my   happiness — a 

,  appiness  which  justified  the  faith  of  man's  earthly  lot  as  upon 
le  whole  a  dowry  from  heaven !  It  was,  in  its  exterior,  not  so 
uch  a  picturesque  cottage  ...  as  it  was  lovely  :  one  gable-end 
as,  indeed,  most  gorgeously  apparelled  in  ivy,  and  so  far  pictu- 
iJsque  ;  but  .  .  .  the  front  .  .  .  was  embowered — nay,  it  may  be 


: 


we  WORDSWORTH   AND    HIS   CIRCLE 

said,  smothered — in  roses  of  different  species,  amongst  which  th 
moss  and  the  damask  prevailed.  These,  together  with  as  muc 
jasmine  and  honeysuckle  as  could  find  room  to  flourish,  .  . 
performed  the  acceptable  service  of  breaking  the  unpleasant  glar 
that  would  else  have  wounded  the  eye.  ...  It  was  very  irregula 
in  its  outline  to  the  rear,  by  the  aid  of  one  little  projectin 
room,  and  also  of  a  stable  and  little  barn  in  immediate  conta( 
with  the  dwelling-house." 

Here,  then,  a  mile  from  one  of  the  poets  of  his  dearei 
adoption,  with  his  thirty  chestfuls  or  so  of  books,  and,  alas  !  wit 
a  decanter  full  of  laudanum  on  the  table  beside  him,  at  a 
events,  on  Saturday  nights,  this  singular  young  man  of  twenty 
five,  the  **  most  well-informed  man  of  his  age  "  that  Southe 
had  ever  met  (and  Southey's  standard  of  information  wa 
high),  settled  down  to  read  German  philosophy,  pedestrianiz( 
and  intoxicate  himself  with  the  alluring  Eastern  drug.  H 
made  a  strange  and  dubious  successor  to  the  harmles. 
abstemious  Wordsworths — abstemious  almost  as  much  froi 
reading,  in  De  Quincey's  avid  sense  of  the  word,  as  fror 
illegitimate  stimulants  and  sedatives.  Yet  we  must  not  rejec 
the  kind  of  romance  with  which  the  opium-eater  invested  Dov 
Cottage  in  his  turn..  When  we  have  had  enough  of  the  swec 
garden-life  and  Nature-worship  of  William  and  Dorothy,  let  u 
years  afterwards,  enter  Dove  Cottage  on  some  bleak  winte 
night,  and  look  on  at  another  kind  of  pleasure.  De  Quince 
has  by  this  time  taken  a  wife,  a  healthy,  homely,  Westmorlan 
lass,  Margaret  Simpson  by  name,  daughter  of  Farmer  Simpso 
(a  "  statesman,"  as  freeholder-farmers  are  called  in  those  parts 
who  lived  at  Nab  Cottage.  He  loves  winter  and  darkness  an 
artificial  light,  so  we  must  not  look  for  him  in  the  orchard  or  th 
summer-house  or  by  the  well,  or  prone  on  daisy-  or  celandine 
besprinkled  grass.  Winter,  "  in  its  sternest  shape,"  was  a 
essential  of  De  Quincey's  happiness,  not  for  the  sake  of  sunligh 
on  snow-wreath,  sparkle  of  icicle,  or  the  pink  flush  of  mil 
sunsets  on  the  high  clouds,  but  for  the  sake  of  "the  divin 
pleasures "  of  a  winter  fireside.  He  enumerates  them 
"Candles  at  four  o'clock,  warm  hearthrugs,  tea,  a  fair  tea 
maker,  shutters  closed,  curtains  flowing  in  ample  draperies  o 
the  floor,  whilst  the  wind  and  rain  are  raging  audibly  withou 
.  .  .  Start  at  the  first  week  of  November  :  thence  to  the  end  c 


THOMAS   DE   QUIXCEV 

FROM    THE    PAINTING    BY    SIK    J.    WATSON"    GORDON    IN    THE    NATIONAL    PORTRAIT    GALLERY 


THOMAS   DE   QUINCEY  207 

knuary,  Christmas  Eve  being  the  meridian  line,  you  may  com- 
ute  the  period  when  happiness  is  in  season,  which,  in  my 
idgment,  enters  the  room  with  the  tea-tray."  And  the  tea- 
ay  is  not  mainly  for  Mrs.  De  Quincey's  benefit,  nor  is  it  a 
iece  of  ceremonialism.  There  is  an  "  eternal  teapot "  in  the 
^sion.  "  I  [De  Quincey]  usually  drink  tea  from  eight  o'clock 
;  night  to  four  in  the  morning."  As  we  look  in,  then,  we  see 
lese  things ;  and  we  see  that  the  room  is  "  populous "  with 
Dout  five  thousand  books,  steadily  collected  since  De  Quincey 
ent  to  Oxford.  We  see  a  good  fire  and  simple  furniture,  and 
motherly  and  not  intellectual  wife  making  tea.  Lastly,  we  see 
decanter  holding  a  quart  of  ruby-coloured  laudanum  on  the 
ible ;  beside  it  a  book  of  German  metaphysics ;  and,  near  the 
indies  and  the  laudanum  and  the  German  metaphysics,  we  see 
le  large  head  and  pale,  short-sighted  face  of  De  Quincey 
imself. 

No  other  inhabitation  did  Dove  Cottage  know  in  the  tens 
lid  twenties  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Yet  De  Quincey  was  by 
o  means  always  there ;  he  went  to  London  and  ate  dinners  at 
le  Middle  Temple  ;  he  went  to  the  west  country  ;  he  went  to 
Edinburgh  and  saw  *'  Christopher  North  "  about  Blackwood.  As 
rule,  he  soon  drifted  back  to  Grasmere.  In  182 1  he  was  some 
lonths  in  London,  and  in  that  year  the  Confessions  of  an 
'.nglish  Opium-Eater  began  to  come  out  in  the  London 
Magazine,  Yet,  if  it  was  (as  it  is  credibly  reported)  in  London, 
od  "  in  a  little  room  at  the  back  of  Mr.  H.  G.  Bohn's  premises, 
To.  4,  York  Street,  Covent  Garden,"  that  De  Quincey  described 
le  pleasures  and  pains  of  opium,  it  was  at  Dove  Cottage  that 
e  felt  them.  The  "  pains  of  opium,"  those  delirious  horrors  in 
lat  jasmine-clothed,  rose-scented  place  of  innocence  and  peace  ; 
>hat  a  paradox  ! 

The  year  18 13  was  critical  in  the  lives  of  both  De  Quincey 
nd  Wordsworth.  For  Wordsworth  it  was  the  year  in  which  he 
nally  left  Grasmere  and  settled  at  Rydal  Mount.  For  De 
)uincey  it  was  a  year  of  multiform  calamity.  Something — 
robably  something  pecuniary — went  seriously  wrong  in  his 
ffairs  ;  illness,  "  a  most  appalling  irritation  of  the  stomach," 
eized  him ;  he  became  "  a  regular  and  confirmed  (no  longer  an 
itermitting)  opium-eater."  We  may  think  of  the  year,  perhaps, 
s  the  moment  of  transition  from  the  pleasures  to  the  pains.     It 


208  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

was  unfortunate,  no  doubt,  from  this  point  of  view,  that  th 
Wordsworths  left  the  Vale,  and  went  even  to  so  short  a  distanc 
as  Rydal.  For  their  going  denuded  Grasmere  of  the  societ 
which  might  have  kept  De  Quincey  on  a  higher  moral  plane 
Coleridge  had  disappeared  from  those  parts  in  1810,  to  g 
to  London,  then  to  Bristol,  and  finally,  to  enter  on  his  Ion. 
domestication  at  Highgate ;  and  the  Lakes  saw  him  no  more 
Southey  was  a  long  way  off  ;  and  Southey  did  not  care  muc 
for  De  Quincey.  During  their  last  years  at  Grasmere,  D 
Quincey's  relations  to  the  Wordsworths  were  rather  uncertair 
With  Wordsworth  himself  the  friendship  did  not  grow.  Ther 
was  no  positive  breach,  but  there  was  undeniable  estrangement 
which  was  emphasized  by  the  departure  of  the  poet  from  th 
Vale.  Wordsworth  was  reserved  ;  and,  though  he  was  in  m 
discreditable  sense  self-involved,  he  lived  too  much  in  th( 
practice  of  his  art,  too  much  in  the  routine  of  domesticity,  am 
too  much  in  the  rites  of  Nature-worship,  to  set  much  store  bj 
companionship,  however  intellectually  congenial.  And  wa; 
perfect  intellectual  congeniality  possible  between  those  tw( 
men  ?  De  Quincey  had  helped  Wordsworth  with  his  pamphlet 
he  understood  his  poetry,  at  least  better  than  any  other  of  th( 
small  band  of  Wordsworth-readers  in  those  days  ;  and,  befon 
he  saw  him,  his  heart  had  bounded  like  a  lover's  at  the  though 
of  him.  But  was  that  enough  for  a  perfect  friendship  with  sucl 
a  man  ?  Was  not  De  Quincey  too  bookish,  too  merely  ingeniou; 
and  subtle,  to  claim  perfect  fellowship  with  one  so  absolutel} 
original,  so  naked-souled  as  Wordsworth  }  And  then  their  habit 
were  so  irreconcilable!  There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  tha 
De  Quincey  would  hide,  or  would  try  or  wish  to  hide,  th( 
laudanum-decanter  from  Wordsworth's  austere  eye ;  and  whai 
can  Wordsworth  have  thought  of  that }  And  the  tea-drinking 
till  four  in  the  morning  !  Those  were  not  Wordsworth's  ways 
And  the  German  metaphysics !  We  know  what  Wordswortt 
thought  of  them  and  of  German  literature  in  general  when  ht 
was  in  Germany ;  and  he  was  not  a  man  to  change  his  estimates 
under  anybody's  influence.  Both  men  were  great  walkers,  bul 
even  here  they  differed.  For  while  Wordsworth  would  stroll  out 
before  an  orthodox  bedtime  to  see  the  moon  and  the  stars,  De 
Quincey  was  an  out-and-out  nocturnal  animal  ;  and,  as  he 
prowled  along,  he  thought  less  of  moon  and  stars  than  of  signs 


THOMAS   DE   QUINCEY  209 


of  humanity  ;  the  twinklings  in  cottage  windows  ;  the  telling  of 
;the  hours  to  heedless  ears  in  graves.     And,  to  crown  all,  there 
;was  De  Quincey's  incurable,  appalling  shyness ;  his  irrepressible 
:  jimpulse  always  to  run  away  from  everybody ! 

But  if  he  drew  off  from  Wordsworth  himself,  if  the  glamour 

of  years  inevitably  waned,  De  Quincey  was  still  closely  knit 

with  Dorothy.     The  Wordsworth  children,  too,  twined  themselves 

round  his  still  bachelor  heart,  and  the  shy,  pale-faced  little  man, 

vvith  his  comings  and  goings,  was  an  object  of  great  interest  to  the 

youngsters.     A  letter  from  him,  when  an  absentee  in  London, 

would  bring  a  flush  of  pleasure  to  Johnny's  face ;  and  all  the 

:hildren  looked  eagerly  for  the  promised  gifts — the  black  hat, 

:he  toy  carriage,  or  whatever  they  might  be — on  his  return. 

Poor   little    Katy  was  his  special    friend.     As   an    infant   she 

:  (loticed  De  Quincey  more  than  anybody,  except  her  mother. 

AVhen  she  died,  in  1812,  he  mourned  her  with  a  note  of  real 

poignancy.      He  was  in   London  at  the   time   of  her   death ; 

Dorothy  wrote  to  tell  him  of  it,  and  of  "  the  perfect  image  of 

oeace  "  on  the  bed.     "  I  was  truly  glad  to  find,"  he  wrote,  in  the 

:ourse  of  his  reply,   "from  your  account  of  her  funeral,  that 

hose  who  attended  were,  in  general,  such  as  would  more  or  less 

mafifectedly  partake  in  your  sorrow.      It   has  been  an  awful 

i:mployment   to   me,  the   recollecting   where    I   was   and   how 

iccupied  when  this  solemn  scene  was  going  on.     At  that  time 

must  have  been  in  the  streets  of  London ;  tired,  I  remember, 

dv  I  had  just  recovered  from  sickness,  but  cheerful,  and  filled 

.  i^ith  pleasant  thoughts.  ...  As  well  as  I  recollect,  I  must  have 

..  ^een  closing  my  eyes  in  sleep  just  about  the  time  that  my 

.  l.lessed  Kate  was  closing  hers  for  ever !     Oh  that  I  might  have 

led  for  her  or  with  her  !  ...  If  I  had  seen  her  in  pain  I  could 

ave  done  anything  for  her ;  and  reason  it  was  that  I  should, 

Dr  she  was  a  blessing  to  me,  and  gave  me  many  and  many  an 

our  of  happy  thoughts  that  I  can  never  have  again."     His 

eart,  he  assures  Dorothy,  grows  heavier  every  day.     As  he  was 

acking  his  things  to  go  back  to  Westmorland,  he  reme/nbered 

ow,  on  the  Sunday  before  he  left  Grasmere,  Katy  got  up  on 

chair,  and  putting  her  hand  on  his  mouth,  whispered  earnestly, 

Kinsey  !  Kinsey  !  what  a  bring  Katy  from  London  ?  "     Never, 

£  thought,  should  he  hear  so  sweet  a  voice  again.     The  poor 

hild,  as  we  know,  was  to  her  father  an  incarnation  of  childhood, 

p 


210  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

and  some  of  his  sweetest  poetry  of  childhood  was  dedicated  to' 
her.  It  was,  in  some  respects,  the  same  with  De  Quincey.  He 
made  prose-poetry  about  her;  he  fanned  and  stimulated  his, 
passionate  feeling  about  her.  "  I  had  always  viewed  her,"  he 
wrote,  "as  an  impersonation  of  the  dawn  and  the  spirit  of 
infancy;  and  this  abstraction  seated  in  her  person,  together 
with  the  visionary  sort  of  connection  which  even  in  her  parting 
hours  she  assumed  with  the  summer  sun,  by  turning  her 
immersion  into  the  cloud  of  death  with  the  rising  and  the 
setting  of  that  fountain  of  life — these  combined  impressions 
recoiled  so  violently  into  a  contrast  or  polar  antithesis  to  the 
image  of  death,  that  each  exalted  and  heightened  the  other." 
And  so,  when  he  came  back  to  Grasmere,  little  Katy's  spirit 
was  with  him  all  the  summer,  bringing  her  innocent  presence 
into  his  opium-led  reveries  and  dreams.  He  tasted  something 
of  the  luxury  of  woe.  He  tells  us  that  he  often  passed  the 
night  on  her  grave  "  in  mere  intensity  of  sick,  frantic  yearning 
after  neighbourhood  to  "  the  darling  of  his  heart.  In  broad 
daylight  he  would  resort  to  certain  upland  fields  where  he  knew, 
he  should  see  the  sweet  phantom  ;  born,  as  it  seemed,  out  ol 
ferns  and  flowers ;  always  coming  towards  him  with  a  baskei 
on  her  head,  wearing  "  the  little  blue  bedgown  and  black  skirl 
of  Westmorland." 

When  little  Tom  followed  his  sister  in  December,  Dc 
Quincey  was  again  absent,  and  the  tidings  met  him  at  Liverpoo 
on  his  way  home.  Wordsworth  himself  was  his  informant 
and  his  letter  breathes  anything  but  estrangement.  "  Pra} 
come  to  us,"  he  wrote,  "as  soon  as  you  can.  .  .  .  Most  tenderl} 
and  lovingly,  with  heavy  sorrow  for  you,  my  dear  friend  (i 
was  the  time  of  De  Quincey's  mysterious  misfortune).  I  remaii 
yours,  W.  Wordsworth." 

Yet,  for  all  this,  the  milk  of  De  Quincey 's  feeling  fo:' 
Wordsworth  was  losing  its  sweetness,  and  there  was  never  an) 
return  of  the  old  fascination.  The  Wordsworths  went  to  Rydal 
and  a  new  chapter  of  their  life  began.  The  pains  of  opiun 
held  De  Quincey  helpless  for  years.  When  recovery  set  in,  hi; 
movements  were  more  and  more  regulated  by  the  exigencie^ 
of  the  journalistic  career  into  which  he  had  drifted,  a  caree 
which,  in  those  days  as  in  these,  a  man  could  hardly  foUov 
satisfactorily  among  far-away  mountains,  even  in  a  Paradise 


THOMAS   DE   QUINCEY  211 


;  To  London  or  Edinburgh — in  those  days  as  much  an  intellectual 
;  :entre  as  London — or  to  the  immediate  neighbourhood  of  either, 
;'  :he  journalist  was  inevitably  drawn.     De  Quincey,  after  some 
/ears  in  London,  fixed  himself  for  the  rest  of  his  life  in  and 
lear  Edinburgh.     For  a  time  he  was  kept  among  the  Lakes  by 
'*  [lis  first  definite  journalistic  job,  the  editorship  of  the  Westmor- 
■■^•and  Gazette,  which  lasted  for  about  a  year,  in  1819  and  1820. 
';•  3ut  he  was  made  for  higher  things;  and  in  September,  1821, 
'"^  'he  best  of  his  mind  began  to  appear  to  the  world  in  the  pages 
"'  )f  the  Londofi  Magazine,  in  the  shape  of  the  first  instalment  of 
'-  -he   Confessions  of  an   English  Opium-Eater.      Henceforward, 
^'  ihough   Dove   Cottage   remained   the   home   of  his   wife   and 
''■  children  until  1830,  and   he  was  occasionally  there,  he  could 
""  (lardly  consider  himself  the  neighbour  of  Wordsworth. 
^S    L)e  Quincey  thought  Wordsworth  very  "proud."      As  he 
^^"iut  it,  instead  of  calling  him  as  proud  as  Lucifer,  one  ought 
^.  b  say  that  Lucifer  may  possibly  be  nearly  as  proud  as  Words- 
•^rorth.     Yet,  in  18 14,  Wordsworth  was  consulting  De  Quincey 
'•  bout   Laodamia,  and   welcoming   his   criticisms    deferentially. 
■   ind  two  years  later,  Wordsworth  was   complaining  that  De 
-   luincey   had   "taken   a  fit   of  solitude."     One   phase   of  the 
/ordsworthian  "pride"  galled  De  Quincey  after  his  marriage 
,  1816.   Good  Margaret  Simpson,  the  "statesman's  "  daughter  of 
ydal  Nab,  was  not  the  kind  of  Mrs.  De  Quincey  on  whom  Mr.    . 
ld  Mrs.  Wordsworth  felt  they  could  call ;  or,  if  they  called,  they 
t  the  acquaintance  drop  at  that  point.     There  seems  no  doubt 
at  the  good  woman  suffered  social  neglect  at  their  hands ;  and 
e  Quincey  was  not  philosophical  enough  not  to  wince.     After 
^s  wife's  death  he  wrote  pathetically,  with  a  reference  which, 
'  liough  hidden,  is  unmistakable.      "  The  hour  is  passed  irre- 
vocably and  by  many  a  year,  in  which  an  act  of  friendship  so 
:  ifitural,  and  costing  so  little  (in  both  senses  so  priceless)  could 
■'-  l,ve  been  availing.      The  ear  is  deaf  that  should  have  been 
Placed  by  the  sound  of  welcome.     Call,  but  you  will  not  be 
I'ard  ;  shout  aloud,  but  your  *  Ave  ! '  and  *  All  hail ! '  will  now 
t.l  only  as  an  echo  of  departed  days,  proclaiming  the  hollow- 
ss  of  human  hope.'* 

this  painful  situation,  Dorothy  seems  to  have  tried  to  play 
ts  part  of  helper  and  healer.  She  went  to  Dove  Cottage,  with 
br  bright  eyes  and  enchanting  sympathy,  during  De  Quincey's 


-:•  ijss  o 
■^\  In 


212  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

long  absences  ;  and  when  at  last  it  was  evident  that  Edinburgl: 
was  to  be  his  home,  it  was  Dorothy  who  suggested  that  he 
should  move  his  family  thither  from  Grasmere.  She  saw,  she 
wrote  to  him,  the  sadness  in  his  wife's  manner  ;  and  she  made 
bold  to  advise  that  the  separation  should  be  brought  to  an  end 
as  in  due  time  it  was.  To  Edinburgh  the  family  went ;  anc 
there  the  wife  and  mother  died  and  was  buried. 

But  De  Quincey  was  not  wholly  egoistic  when  he  spoke  o 
Wordsworth's  pride.  By  "  pride  "  he  also  and  chiefly  meant  hi: 
serene  self-consciousness,  his  lofty  self-approval.  And  for  tha 
he  had  a  good  as  well  as  a  bad  word.  One  of  his  best  pieces  O; 
literary  criticism  occurs  incidentally  in  an  article  on  one  c 
Landor's  Imaginary  Co7iversations,  in  which  Landor  an( 
Southey  discuss  Milton.  By  one  of  the  speakers,  Wordswortl 
is  reported  to  have  spoken  slightingly  of  Keats,  and  is  blamec 
accordingly.  De  Quincey  does  not  dwell  long,  though  he  dwell 
to  much  purpose,  on  Keats  ;  but  he  says  a  good  deal  abou 
Wordsworth,  and  especially  about  the  nobler  phase  of  his  pridf 
The  interlocutors  put  down  Wordsworth's  depreciation  of  Keat 
to  envy.  Any  such  idea  De  Quincey  scouts  utterly.  "  Words 
worth  is  a  very  proud  man,  as  he  has  good  reason  to  be.  .  . 
But  if  proud,  Wordsworth  is  not  ostentatious,  is  not  anxious  fc 
display,  and  least  of  all  is  he  capable  of  descending  to  env} 
Who  or  what  is  it  that  he  should  be  envious  of?  Does  any 
body  suppose  that  Wordsworth  would  be  jealous  of  Archimede 
if  he  now  walked  upon  earth,  or  Michael  Angelo,  or  Milton 
Nature  does  not  repeat  herself.  Be  assured  she  will  neve 
make  a  second  Wordsworth."  Wordsworth,  he  means,  was  nc 
only  great,  absolutely  great,  but  unique.  "  If  you  show  t; 
Wordsworth  a  man  as  great  as  himself,  still  that  great  man  wi. 
not  be  much  like  Wordsworth — the  great  man  will  not  t 
Wordsworth's  doppelgdnger.  If  not  impar  (as  you  say)  he  will  t 
dispar ;  and  why,  then,  should  Wordsworth  be  jealous  of  him 
.  .  .  But  suddenly  it  strikes  me  that  we  are  all  proud,  ever 
man  of  us  ;  and  I  dare  say  with  some  reason  for  it."  E 
Quincey  was  in  a  rather  riotously  playful  mood  when  he  wrol- 
this  essay  ;  and  he  soon  passes  into  his  characteristic  persiflag, 
But,  so  far  as  Wordsworth  was  concerned,  he,  in  the  wore 
which  have  been  quoted,  wrote,  surely,  with  genuine  magnan 
mity,  genuine  insight. 


THOMAS   DE   QUINCEY  21S 

After  years  of  habitual  separation  from  the  Lake  Poets,  De 

Juincey  began  to   use  them   as  copy.     In   the  thirties,  there 

ippeared    those    Recollections  of  Coleridge,   Wordsworth,    and 

Southey,  from  which,  here  and  there,  quotations  have  already 

)een   made.     With  Wordsworth  De  Quincey  dealt  much  more 

landsomely  than  with  Coleridge,  with  whom  he  wrangled  as  a 

ival   opium-eater,  and    then    abused   for   plagiarism,  and  one 

mows  not  what  besides.     Yet  his  touch  on  Wordsworth  is  not 

hat  of  the  hero- worshipper  ;  it  is  hardly  that  of  the  friend.     He 

ells  a  propos  of  nothing  in  particular  that  Wordsworth  once, 

.nd  only  once,  got  drunk  at  Cambridge.     By  hints  here  and 

uggestions  there,  in  a  characterization  meant  to  be  exceedingly 

avourable,  he  manages  to  give  the  impression  of  a  personality 

undamentally  unattractive.     We  are  told,  probably  quite  truly, 

hat  Wordsworth  was  incapable  of  the  self-surrender  without 

;hich  a  man  cannot  be  a  proper  lover.    We  are  told  of  occasional 

peevishness  and  ill-humour  ;  we  are  given  to  understand  a  lack 

f  amiability  ;  we  are  assured  of  a  total  absence  of  gallantry. 

•\.nd  Wordsworth's  indifference  to  books  is,  in  De  Quincey's 

ersion  of  it,  somehow  made  to  show  some  shabbiness  of  mind  as 

^ell   as   slenderness   of  purse.     Much   of   the   disillusionment 

uffered  by  Wordsworth  in  De  Quincey's  regard  turned  on  the 

itellectual  narrowness  shown  in  his  very  partial  and  very  one- 

ided   interest   in   literature.     That   narrowness  made  the  dis- 

lusion  a  loss  of  critical  respect,  as  well  as   a  diminution  of 

ersonal  affection.     "  It  is   impossible,"  wrote  De  Quincey,  in 

is  over-emphatic  way,   "  to  imagine  the  perplexity  of  mind 

^hich  possessed  me  when  I  heard  Wordsworth  ridicule  many 

ooks  which  I  had  been  accustomed  to  admire  profoundly." 

Jis  one-sidedness  in  literary  taste  amounted  to  a  deformity. 

le  would  praise  mere   nobodies   and   dispraise   classics.     De 

)uincey  seriously  doubted  if  he  had  ever  read  a  page  of  Scott's 

ovels.     This  was  strange  and  shocking  indeed,  nor,  of  course, 

as  it  true.     Yet,  as  regards  Wordsworth's  taste  in  fiction,  it 

ould  seem  that  it  was  in  one  respect  sounder  than  his  quondam 

isciple's.     For  he  read   and  admired  Fielding,  Smollett,  and 

-e  Sage,  at  whom  De  Quincey  only  turned  up  his  nose.     On 

le  whole,  De  Quincey  came  to  view  Wordsworth  as  "  a  mixed 

reature,  made  up  of  special  infirmity  and   special   strength," 

nd  as  "  no  longer  capable  of  an  equal  friendship." 


214  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

In  the  year  1845,  ^^^  years  before  the  poet's  death,  D 
Quincey  composed  a  final  critical  estimate  of  Wordswortl 
He  announced  it  with  something  of  a  flourish  of  trumpets.  ] 
was  to  be  an  estimate  of  the  poet's  total  work,  a  thing  he  ha 
not  attempted  in  the  case  of  any  writer  before.  Yet  th ' 
achievement  does  not  bear  out  the  preface.  The  essay  is  littl 
more  than  an  outline,  a  series  of  reflections  and  notes,  favourabl 
and  unfavourable,  on  Wordsworth's  poetry,  out  of  which 
complete  critical  estimate  might  be  made.  But  it  has,  at  leas 
the  importance  of  being  De  Quincey's  last  word  on  the  subjec 
a  word  spoken  at  a  long  remove,  in  time  and  space,  fror 
irritating  thoughts  and  irritated  feelings. 

"  In  calm  of  mind,  all  passion  spent." 

It  is  characteristic  of  the  critic  and  of  the  developed  relatior 
ship  between  the  two  men  that  he  begins  with  dispraise.  In  th 
course  of  accounting  for  Wordsworth's  early  unpopularity,  h 
falls  upon  his  theory  of  poetic  diction,  with  which,  however,  h 
fails  to  deal  either  exhaustively  or  very  impressively.  Hi 
conclusion,  indeed,  is  that  "  the  whole  question  moved  b 
Wordsworth  is  still  a  res  Integra  (a  case  untouched).  And  fc 
this  reason,  that  no  sufficient  specimen  has  ever  been  given  c 
the  particular  phraseology  which  each  party  contemplates  a 
good  or  as  bad ;  no  man  in  this  dispute  steadily  understands  evei 
himself."     So  De  Quincey  takes  his  leave  of  poetic  diction. 

Then  come  his  suggestions  for  praise.  The  first  is  recondit 
and  subtle.  Hazlitt  remarked  that  Wordsworth  dealt  little  i] 
his  poetry  with  ''marrying  and  giving  in  marriage."  "Well, 
replies  De  Quincey,  *'one  man  cannot  deal  with  everything 
But  there  is  another  reason  why  Wordsworth  could  not  meddl 
with  festal  raptures  like  the  glory  of  a  wedding-day.  Thes 
raptures  are  not  only  too  brief,  but  (which  is  worse)  they  tem 
downwards;  even  for  as  long  as  they  last,  they  do  not  mov 
upon  an  ascending  scale.  And  even  that  is  not  their  wors 
fault :  they  do  not  diffuse  or  communicate  themselves.  .  . 
Mere  joy,  that  does  not  linger  and  reproduce  itself  in  reverbera 
tions  and  endless  mirrors,  is  not  fitted  for  poetry."  This  i. 
hardly  convincing.     Spenser's  Epithalamium  *  is  surely  poetry, 

*  De  Quincey  refers  to  Spenser's  EpithcUamia  (j/'c),  but  only  as  poems  whic 
'*  nobody  reads." 


I 


THOMAS   DE   QUINCEY  215 

i  if  poetry  ever  was  ;  and  it  is  made  out  of  "mere  joy  "  with  no 

t  reverberations  or  reflections,  no  altruistic  arrihe  pensie  of  any 
sort.     Could  Wordsworth  not  have  written  it  only  because  he 

^  iwas  more  unselfish  than  Spenser,  and  therefore  had  truer  insight 

■i  into  poetic  fitness  ? 

But  De  Quincey  gives  yet  another  and  a  better  reason  for 
Wordsworth's  avoidance  of  unrelieved  joy.  Wordsworth,  he 
thinks,  was  constitutionally  obliged  always  to  contemplate  joy 
in  relation  to  its  opposites,  to  pain  and  grief.  In  illustration,  he 
points  to  Matthew,  and  the  cheerfulness  born  out  of  his  sorrows  ; 
to  We  are  Seven,  and  its  blending  of  life  so  intense  as  to  destroy 
death  with  the  very  idea  of  the  death  that  is  destroyed.  "  The 
little  mountaineer,  who  furnishes  the  text  for  this  lovely  strain, 
she  whose  fulness  of  life  could  not  brook  the  gloomy  faith  in  a 
grave,  is  yet  (for  the  effect  upon  the  reader)  brought  into  con- 
nection with  the  reflex  shadows  of  the  grave.  .  .  .  That  same 
(infant,  which  subjectively  could  not  tolerate  death,  being  by  the 
reader  contemplated  objectively,  flashes  upon  us  the  tenderest 
iimages  of  death."  Here  we  feel  that  De  Quincey  is  as  sound 
as  he  is  subtle.  It  was  of  the  very  essence  of  Wordsworth,  as  it 
must  be  of  all  the  greatest  men,  to  find  no  beauty  in  falsification  ; 
to  be  content  with  no  sugaring  of  life  for  poetic  purposes ;  no 
filtering  of  daylight  through  rose-coloured  curtains.  His  joys 
were  *'  three  parts  pain ; "  "  the  Comforter "  was  surest  to  find 
him  at   his  heaviest  moments  ;  it  was  "  sweet "  to  him  when 

.:  .pleasant  thoughts  brought  sad  thoughts  to  his  mind.  He  had 
reached  the  faith  which  looks  throicgh  death  ;  and  the  source  of 
his  joy  was  there. 

De  Quincey  proceeds  to  give  a  brief  account  of  some  of  the 
books  of  The  Excursion,  With  the  story  of  Margaret  in  Book 
I.,  and,  indeed,  with  the  whole  poem,  he  deals  in  the  spirit  of 
Jeffrey  rather  than  in  that  of  Coleridge.  "Not  in  The  Exciir- 
sionl'  he  concludes,  "  must  we  look  for  that  reversionary  in- 
fluence which  awaits  Wordsworth  with  posterity."  We  must 
look  for  it  in  his  short  poems ;  where  we  shall  find  it  in  their 
''truth";  their  power  of  strengthening  impressions  already  faintly 
made,  or  of  suddenly  unveiling  "  a  connection  between  objects 
liitherto  regarded  as  irrelate  and  independent."  It  is  truth  of 
Nature,  truth  of  scenery,  primarily,  which  it  was  Wordsworth's 
prerogative  thus  to  reveal.     From  Shakespeare  onwards  such 


216  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

revelation  had  been  suspended.  "  At  length,  as  the  eighteenth 
century  was  winding  up  its  accounts,  forth  stepped  William 
Wordsworth,  of  whom,  as  a  reader  of  all  pages  of  Nature  it  may 
be  said  that,  if  we  except  Dampier,  the  admirable  buccaneer, 
the  gentle  flibustier^  and  some  few  professional  naturalists,  he 
first  and  he  last  looked  at  natural  objects  with  the  eye  that 
neither  will  be  dazzled  from  without  nor  cheated  by  preconcep- 
tion from  within."  The  careful  student  of  Wordsworth  will 
hardly  be  satisfied  with  this,  in  spite  of  its  plausibility.  For  it 
conveys  a  wrong  idea  of  Wordsworth's  nature-poetry,  of  his 
attitude  towards  Nature  and  his  method  of  dealing  with  her. 
It  gives  the  impression  of  Wordsworth  as  a  careful  realist ;  a 
reproducer  of  Nature's  mintUicBy  without  limitation  and  without 
amhe pensie.  But  it  is  not  so  ;  Wordsworth  was  far  from  being 
any  such  "naturalist"  in  verse.  In  spite  of  poems  about  pet 
lambs,  greenfinches,  cuckoos,  and  daffodils  ;  in  spite  of  poems 
about  clouds  and  waterfalls,  he  was  no  poet  of  such  objects  in 
themselves,  and  those  who  go  to  him  fancying  that  he  was, 
will  always  be  disappointed.  He  was  a  poet  of  the  Universe 
and  of  Man  ;  a  poet  of  large  vague  objects  and  effects,  of 
abstractions  in  their  ultimate  truth  expressible  only  by  sug- 
gestion. And  the  scenery  of  the  Lake  district,  its  flora  and 
fauna,  its  clouds  and  waters,  was  used  by  Wordsworth,  not  for 
its  own  sake,  but  for  the  sake  of  the  Universal  Life  and  Beauty 
which  informed  them.  Many  readers  of  Wordsworth  fail  to 
grasp  this  ;  it  is  strange  that  De  Ouincey  should  be  among 
them  1 

His  insight  is  true  when  he  speaks  of  Wordsworth  as  a 
revealer  of  spiritual  truths  in  these  human  relations,  and  it 
helps  him  to  a  worthy  leave-taking  of  the  poet  who,  from  first 
to  last,  had  bulked  so  largely  in  his  life.  His  early  unpopularity 
in  this  respect  came  from  no  weakness  or  shortcoming ;  it  was 
the  inevitable  result  of  the  poet's  originality  and  depth. 
"  Whatever  is  too  original  will  be  hated  at  the  first.  It  must 
slowly  mould  a  public  for  itself.  .  .  .  Meditative  poetry  is, 
perhaps,  that  province  of  literature  which  will  ultimately  main- 
tain most  power  amongst  the  generations  which  are  coming ; 
but  in  this  department,  at  least,  there  is  little  competition  to  be 
apprehended  by  Wordsworth  from  anything  that  has  appeared 
since  the  death  of  Shakespeare.'* 


hi 


ii 


CHAPTER  X 
"THE  FROLIC  AND  THE  GENTLE 


00  r^UR  last  glimpse  of  Charles  Lamb  was  at  the  end  of  his 
ioj  O^  holiday- week  in  1797,  in  the  return  coach  from  Bridg- 
p«  Irater  to  Bristol,  on  his  way  back  to  London  ; — the  India  House, 
ind  the  terrible  problems  of  his  tragedy-smitten  home-life.  A 
ries  of  poems — too  sacredly  personal  to  be  criticized  as  mere 
raJ>oetry — remains  to  show  something  of  what  the  collapse  of 
-.amb's  first  home  meant  to  him.  The  week  at  Nether  Stowey 
nth  Coleridge  and  the  Wordsworths  was  but  a  tiny  green  islet 
a  a  "deep  wide  sea"  of  black  weltering  waves.  Charles  Lamb 
^as  only  twenty-two,  and  he  was  to  be  before  all  things  a 
Lumorist ;  but  the  grief  which  speaks  in  these  verses  is  neither 
entimental  nor  theatrical.  His  mother  dead,  we  remember 
LOW ;  his  sister  in  her  shroud  of  alienation  ;  his  father  stricken 
^ith  palsy,  and  in  a  few  months  to  follow  his  wife  out  of  the 
irorld,  what  could  compensate  for  all  this  ?  Even  his  good  old 
,unt,  who  had  been  so  kind  to  him  in  his  school-days,  so 
terested  in  his  yellow  coat,  blue  gown,  and  red  belt — even 
he  must  needs  leave  him  in  this  dark  time ! 

"  Farewell,  good  aunt ! 
Go  thou  and  occupy  the  same  grave-bed 
Where  the  dead  mother  lies." 

In  after-life,  religion,  in  any  of  its  more  definite  forms,  did 
■lot  play  a  great  part  in  Charles  Lamb's  nature  ;  literature, 
riendship,  the  patience  of  daily  duty,  and  the  sanctities  of 
)rotherly  compassion  and  tenderness,  seemed  to  suffice  for  that 
strange  privileged  being.  But  in  those  days  of  early  sorrow, 
le  was  brought  well  within  the  circle  of  Christian  thought  and 

217 


218  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

consolation.     Even  when  he  hung  over  his  mother's  dead  bod} 

he  felt— 

"  The  blest  subsidings  of  the  storm 
Within,  the  sweet  resignedness  of  hope 
Drawn  heavenward,  and  strength  of  filial  love, 
In  which  I  bow'd  me  to  my  Father's  will."  w 

That  his  poor  father  was  soon  taken  was  not  the  worst  c  ~ 
his  sorrows.      That  place  was  held  by  Mary's  aberration  an 
enforced  absence  from  his  hearth.     Yet  even  under  this  load  h 
would  not  sink,  would  hardly  bend. 

"  Yet  I  will  not  think, 
Sweet  friend,  but  we  shall  one  day  meet,  and  live 
In  quietness,  and  die  so,  fearing  God." 

Thus,  in  default  of  hope,  resignation  closes  on  as  deep 
note,  surely,  as  it  has  ever  sounded — 

"  If  ;/^/,  and  these  false  suggestions  be 
A  fit  of  the  weak  nature,  loth  to  part 
With  what  it  loved  so  long,  and  held  so  dear  ; 
If  thou  art  to  be  taken,  and  I  left 
(More  sinning,  yet  unpunished,  save  in  thee). 
It  is  the  will  of  God,  and  we  are  clay 
In  the  potter's  hands  ;  and,  at  the  worst,  are  made 
From  absolute  nothing,  vessels  of  disgrace. 
Till,  His  most  righteous  purpose  wrought  in  us, 
Our  purified  spirits  find  their  perfect  rest." 

After  such  intimate  breathings,  the  well-known  Old  Farnilia. 
Faces,  with  its  quaint  rhymeless  austerity  of  reminiscence  an( 
regret,  seems  ordinary ;  yet  it  belongs  to  the  same  date,  and  i 
directly  linked  with  the  central  tragedy. 

"  I  had  a  mother,  but  she  died  and  left  me, 
Died  prematurely  in  a  day  of  horrors — 
All,  all  are  gone,  the  old  familiar  faces. 


"  For  some  they  have  died,  and  some  they  have  left  me, 
And  some  ai'e  taken  from  me  ;  all  are  departed  ; 
All,  all  are  gone,  the  old  familiar  faces." 

From  Stowey,  Lamb  took  back  to  London  Wordsworth'.' 
friendship  as  a  permanent  possession  ;  and  henceforward  he 
must  be  regarded  as  a  regular  member  of  the  "circle."     He 


1 


"THE   FROLIC   AND  THE   GENTLE''  219 

was,  indeed,  a  typical  member  of  it :  the  friendship  between 
the  two  men  was  constant ;  on  Wordsworth's  side,  tenderly- 
appreciative  to  the  last  hour  of  Lamb's  life  and  beyond  it ;  on 
Lamb's  side,  respectfully,  but  always  critically,  appreciative. 
Lamb  was  ten  years  older  than  De  Quincey,  and  only  five 
years  younger  than  Wordsworth  himself.  He  never  took  De 
Quincey's  attitude  of  discipleship ;  he  never  felt  the  younger 
man's  engotiemeni  for  Wordsworth.  Nor  was  he  quite  (if  the 
expression  may  be  allowed)  of  Wordsworth's  kidney.  He  was 
one  of  the  greatest  of  critics — much  too  great,  too  sympathetic, 
and  too  fully  emancipated  from  the  conventionalisms  of  the 
eighteenth-century  tradition  to  attack  Wordsworth  as  an 
innovator.  But  the  greatest  and  most  open-minded  critic  may 
have  his  favourites  and  favouritisms ;  his  genius  may  have  its 
natural  starting-point,  its  chosen  exercise-ground.  Lamb's 
favouritism  was  for  dramatic  poetry ;  his  palaestra  was  among 
the  Elizabethans.  His  specific  task  was  to  revive  the  Eliza- 
bethans ;  to  restore  them  to  critical  favour ;  to  explain  their 
inward  significance.  And  after  the  Elizabethans  proper,  he 
loved  poets  like  Cowley  and  Wither.  "  Meditative  "  poetry  (to 
use  De  Quincey's  favourite  epithet),  like  Wordsworth's,  had  no 
special  relish  for  him. 

In  many  respects,  Lamb's  affinities  were  with  Coleridge,  the 
friend  through  whom  he  came  to  know  Wordsworth,  rather 
than  with  Wordsworth  himself.  Both  critics  had  a  much  wider 
joutlook  over  literature  than  Wordsworth ;  both  were  full  of 
Elizabethan  and  dramatic  sympathies.  Nor  were  their  direct 
attitudes  to  Wordsworth  so  very  different.  True,  Coleridge 
was  Wordsworth's  colleague ;  together  they  planned  a  new 
poetry  ;  together  they  issued  Lyrical  Ballads.  But  there  colla- 
boration ceased.  Wordsworth's  theories  of  poetry,  especially 
his  theories  of  poetic  diction  and  imagination,  he  worked  out 
alone;  Coleridge  was  interested  and  appreciative,  but  always 
critical,  and  sometimes,  as  we  know,  disapproving.  Very  much 
the  same  was  it  with  Lamb.  He  saw  too  deeply  into  the 
facts  of  style  to  take  up  the  "  poetic  diction  "  polemic.  When 
the  first  Lyrical  Ballads  came  out,  it  was  evidently  the  Ancient 
Mariner  that  impressed  him  most.  When  the  second  issue 
appeared,  he  wrote  to  Wordsworth  appreciatively  and  discrimi- 
natingly ;  but  still  it  was  the  Ancient  Mariner  that  seemed  to  bulk 


220  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

largest.     He  told  him  how  much  he  liked  the  Lucy  poems,  thi  i 
"  Sexton'^  and  others.  He  complained  of  "the  common  satire  upoi  j 
parsons  and  lawyers  in  the  beginning  "  of  A  Poet's  Epitaph,  anc 
"  the  coarse  epithet  of  '  pin-point ' "  in  the  first  version  of  th( 
sixth  stanza.    He  objected  to  the  didactic  strain  in  "  TJie  Beggar^ 
"  The   instructions  conveyed   in  it  are   too   direct,  and  like  c  J 
lecture ;  they  don't  slide  into  the  mind  of  the  reader  while  he  ' 
is  imagining  no  such  matter.     An  intelligent  reader  finds  a  sor    , 
of  insult  on  being  told,  '  I  will  teach  you  how  to  think  upor  j 
this  subject'     This  fault,  if  I  am  right,  is  in  a  ten-thousandtl  ' 
worse  degree  to  be  found  in  Sterne,  and  in  many  novelists  anc   ; 
modern  poets,  who   continually  put   a  sign-post   up   to   show 
where   you   are    to   feel.     They   set   out   with   assuming   theii 
readers  to  be  stupid  ;  very  different  from  Robinson  Crusoe^  the 
Vicar  of  Wakefield,  Roderick  Random ^  and  other  beautiful,  bare 
narratives."     "Well    and   good.  Master  Charles,"    Wordsworth 
might  have  replied  ;    "  but   Tristram  Shandy  is  as  good   and 
lasting  stuff  as  Roderick  Random  any  day."     Then  Lamb  harks 
back   to  the  Mariner.     "For  me,   I  was  never  so  affected  by 
any  human  tale.     After  first  reading  it,  I  was  totally  possessed 
with  it  for  many  days."     He   thought   Wordsworth  failed  tc 
appreciate  it  enough.     "  I   totally  differ  from   your   idea  that 
the  Mariner  should  have  had  a  character  and  profession.  .  .  . 
Your  other  observation  is,  I  think  as  well,  a  little  unfounded  ; 
the  Mai'iner,  from  being  conversant  in  supernatural  events,  ha^ 
acquired  a  supernatural  and  strange  cast  of  phrase,  eye,  appear- 
ance, etc.,  which  frighten  the  wedding  guest.     You  will  excuse 
my  remarks,  because    I   am  hurt  and  vexed  that  you  should 
think  it  necessary,  with  a  prose  apology,  to  open  the  eyes  of' 
dead  men  that  cannot  see."     And  he  concludes:  "To  sum  up 
a  general  opinion  of  the  second  volume,  I  do  not  feel  any  one 
poem  in  it  so  forcibly  as  the  Ancient  Mariner  and   Tlie  Mad' 
Mother  and  the  Lines  at  Tintern  Abbey  in  the  first."     What  was 
unfavourable  in  this  criticism  roused  Wordsworth  to  quick  self- 
defence,  which  disgusted  Lamb.     The  most  reluctant  of  letter- 
writers,  as  Wordsworth  professed  himself,  lost  no  time,  Lamb 
sarcastically  observed,  in   answering  this   letter.     Possibly,  he 
was  riled  by  the  inaccurate  titles  given  by  Lamb  to  the  poems 
he  referred  to  ;  anyhow,  the  less  noble  side  of  his  egoism  seems 
to  have  shown  itself  in  his  letter.     He  expressed   himself  as 


i 


"THE   FROLIC   AND   THE   GENTLE^'  221 


$1' compelled  to  wish  that  my  [Lamb's]  range  of  sensibility 
p^jyas  more  extended,  being  obliged  to  believe  that  I  should 
in: receive  large  influxes  of  happiness  and  happy  thoughts."  He 
tl  discoursed,  in  the  technical  phraseology  affected  by  him,  about 
ir.  he  union  of  tenderness  and  imagination,  in  a  way  which 
eiiseemed  to  Lamb  to  indicate  that  he  put  himself  above  Shake- 
li  peare.  Altogether  the  critic  was  punished  with  "  four  sweating 
5or pages"  of  rebuke  and  self-exposition.  Nor  was  this  all, 
poj  (Coleridge  sprang  to  the  aid  of  his  collaborator,  and  inflicted 
dj  pn  Lamb  four  more  pages,  "  equally  sweaty  and  more  tedious," 
je;  ithe  upshot  of  which  was  that,  when  one  did  not  care  for  any- 
B  (thing  of  Wordsworth's,  the  fault  must  be  one's  own.  "  What," 
nei  pxclaimed  Lamb,  in  humorous  despair,  "  am  I  to  do  with  such 
ii  people  ?  "  Yet,  even  in  this  mood.  Lamb  was  far  from  feeling 
]ar  ^bout  any  of  Wordsworth's  poetry  as  Jeffrey  did.  He  thought 
X  [ihe  volume  full  of  originality  and  observation.  He  so  admired 
an;  j*  She  dwelt  among  the  untrodden  ways,"  as  to  copy  the  whole 
ir^  |5f  it  in  a  letter.  "  This,"  he  commented,  "  is  choice  and  genuine, 
':  |ind  so  are  many,  many  more."  But  in  the  volume  as  a  whole 
;;r  lie  felt  that  there  was  too  deliberate  an  aim  at  simplicity. 

Lamb,  in   truth,  was   out   and   out  a  Londoner ;    and   his 

jympathies   were   more   concretely   human,   less   abstract   and 

rural,  than  Wordsworth's.      Wordsworth  invited  him  to  come 

;o  Grasmere.     Lamb's  reply,  as  Mr.  Knight  has  pointed  out, 

shows  the   characteristic   differences    between    the    two   men. 

Lamb  doubted  whether  he  should  ever  be  able  to  afford  so  long 

.j;  a  journey.     But  that  was  not  all.     "  Separate  from  the  pleasure 

-   of  your  company,  I  don't  much  care  if  I  never  see  a  mountain 

n  my  life.     I  have  passed  all  my  days  in  London,  until  I  have 

,    (formed  as  many  and  intense  local  attachments  as  any  of  you 

..  mountaineers  can  have  done  with  dead   Nature.     The  lighted 

shops  of  the  Strand  and  Fleet  Street  ...  all  the  bustle  and 

.  ,<vickedness   round    about    Govent    Garden  .  .  .  the   watchmen, 

^  drunken  scenes,  rattles  .  .  .  the  impossibility  of  being  dull  in 

iFleet  Street ;  the  crowds,  the  very  dirt  and  mud.  .  .  .  Steams 

f  soups  from  kitchens  ...  all  those  things  work  themselves 

nto  my  mind,  and  feed  me.  ...  I  often  shed  tears  in  the  motley 

Strand  from  fulness  of  joy  at  so  much  life.     All  these  emotions 

nust  be  strange  to  you ;  so  are  your  rural  emotions  to  me." 

He  even  feels  inclined  to  pity  Wordsworth  for  his  preference. 


:H 


222  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

"  I  should  pity  you,  did  I  not  know  that  the  mind  will  mak 
friends  of  anything.  Your  sun,  and  moon,  and  skies,  and  hill: 
and  lakes,  affect  me  no  more,  or  scarcely  come  to  me  in  mor 
venerable  characters,  than  as  a  gilded  room  with  tapestry  am 
tapers.  ...  I  consider  the  clouds  above  me  but  as  a  roc 
beautifully  painted,  but  unable  to  satisfy  the  mind.  .  .  .  S< 
fading  upon  me,  from  disuse,  have  been  the  beauties  of  Nature 
as  they  have  been  confinedly  called  ;  so  ever  fresh  and  greei 
and  warm  are  all  the  inventions  of  men,  and  assembling  of  men 
in  this  great  city." 

Yet,  in  thus  humorously  sharpening  the  antithesis.  Lamb  wa 
showing  himself  a  more  incomplete  philosopher  than  probabl} 
in  reality  he  was.  The  Excursion  and  The  Prelude,  of  course 
were  as  yet  non-existent ;  and  no  reader  of  Wordsworth  ye 
knew  how  human,  in  one  sense,  the  sources  of  his  poetry  were 
But  Lamb  ought  to  have  recognized  the  very  real,  thougl 
deeply  hidden  bond,  which  unites  urban  and  rural  phenomen? 
in  one  comprehensive  conception  of  Nature.  Lamb's  analysis 
of  his  London  pleasure  reads  like  an  anticipation  of  Wall 
Whitman  ;  and,  indeed,  it  was  left  for  Walt  Whitman — in  one 
respect,  at  least,  Wordsworth's  true  continuator — to  show  thai 
the  poet's  world  has  no  exclusions,  and  that  the  Universal 
Spirit,  which  gives  Nature  its  meaning  and  charm,  is  at  work 
on  the  crowded  bridge  as  in  the  mountain  solitude,  in  the 
thickest  press  of  human  toil  as  much  as  in  remote  places  where 
men  are  sparsely  sown. 

However,  the  Lakes  did  at  last  draw  the  Lambs  to  theii 
bosom  ;  but  it  was  not  Wordsworth  that  they  went  to  see.  In 
1802,  the  year  of  Wordsworth's  marriage,  and  while  he  was 
away  on  the  long  absence  which  ended  in  that  event,  Charles 
and  Mary  Lamb  paid  a  surprise  visit  to  Coleridge  at  Greta 
Hall.  While  Wordsworth  was  writing  sonnets  at  Calais,  the 
Lambs  were  making  acquaintance  with  Skiddaw  and  Blen- 
cathara,  and  the  folded  hills  between  Derwentwaterand  Butter- 
mere.  In  a  post-chaise  they  came  from  Penrith  in  a  glorious 
summer  evening,  "in  a  gorgeous  sunshine,  which  transmuted 
all  the  mountains  into  colours."  Such  evenings  are  none  too 
common  in  that  land  of  watery  veils  ;  and  there  were  no  more 
fine  sunsets,  though  the  Lambs  stayed  three  weeks.  Lamb 
found  that  the  beauties  of  the  land  spoke  to  his  imagination 


"THE   FROLIC   AND  THE   GENTLE ^^  223 

lifter  all.  The  weather  on  the  night  of  arrival  was  lucky  ;  and 
Mien  there  was  the  impression  of  Coleridge's  study,  with  the 
'f  [lazing  fire  which  all  good  Lake  dwellers  allow  themselves  in 
Jie  finest  summer  evenings.  The  "large  antique  ill-shaped 
!(bom,  with  an  old-fashioned  organ,  never  played  upon,  big 
i  Liough  for  a  church,  shelves  of  scattered  folios,  an  ^olian  harp, 
i\  nd  an  old  sofa,  half  bed,  etc."  Above  all,  there  was  the  vast 
f  ulk  of  Skiddaw  "  and  his  broad-breasted  brethren,"  which 
::  iems  to  have  dominated  Lamb's  imagination  as  well  as  his 
Ad  of  vision.  He  writes  the  word  "  Skiddaw  "  seven  times  in 
Ue  course  of  one  not  very  long  letter.  He  climbed  the  hill 
i!  (ith  Mary,  rejoicing  in  the  walk  and  the  view  ;  the  mountain's 
i  tfine  black  head,  and  the  bleak  air  atop  of  it,  with  a  prospect 
s  f  mountains  all  about  and  about,  making  you  giddy ;  and  then 
f;  cotland  afar  off,  and  the  border  countries,  so  famous  in  song 
I  jid  ballad !  It  was  a  day  that  will  stand  out  like  a  mountain, 
I  jam  sure,  in  my  life."  When  first  he  got  back  to  the  Temple 
i  .fter  all  this.  Lamb  felt  smal/,  as  though  denuded  of  ideals, 
ijut  he  was  soon  hugging  himself  as  a  Londoner  again.  It 
c  ts  better  to  live  in  Fleet  Street  and  the  Strand  than  "  amidst 
ikiddaw."  "After  all,  I  could  not  live  in  Skiddaw."  "Still, 
kiddaw  is  a  fine  creature." 

In    their    hospitable   way,   the   Wordsworths    allowed   the 

!ambs  to  stay  a  day  or  two  at  Dove  Cottage  in  their  absence 

•-[-the   Clarksons,   whose    own    dwelling   was    near   Ullswater, 

oing  the  housekeeping.      But  it  was  in  London,  after  their 

;  iiturn,  that  Charles  and  Mary  saw  the  Wordsworths  that  year. 

i'itie  Wordsworths   dined  with  them  at  the  Temple,  and   the 

■,  lambs  took  them  to  see  some  of  the  sights.     A  month  or  two 

Iter,  Charles  was  forwarding,  in  a  parcel  to  Coleridge,  books 

^^lich  Wordsworth  had  left  behind,  and  "  strange  thick-hoofed 

•  ^oes  which  are  very  much  admired  in  London."     We  can  fancy 

te  look  of  them  ! 

The  Lambs  never  again  ventured  as  far  as  Lakeland ;  and 
flture  intercourse  with  Wordsworth  was  all  in  London,  during 
te  poet's  fairly  frequent  visits.  The  friendship  was  established  ; 
Jjd  so  was  the  cordial  literary  appreciation — on  Lamb's  part 
^ays  without  infatuation  or  even  glamour.  As  in  the  friend- 
sip  with  De  Quincey,  Dorothy  was  a  powerful  link.  There 
vis  much  similarity  between  Dorothy  Wordsworth  and  Mary 


224  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

Lamb ;  both  were  gifted  and  literary ;  both  had  quick  sens 
bilities  and  rare  powers  of  intellectual  sympathy  ;  in  both,  ala: 
the  nervous  mechanism  broke  down  under  the  strain  of  thoup 
and  feeling.  One  of  the  most  touching  of  Charles  Lamb 
letters  is  to  Dorothy  in  the  summer  of  1805,  during  one  of  h 
sister's  absences  through  mental  illness.  To  no  one  else  did  1 
ever  so  completely  lay  open  the  sad  recurrent  wound.  It  seen 
almost  profanation  to  quote  from,  or  even  to  publish,  such  utte 
ance  ;  the  agonizing  love,  the  distracting  perplexity,  the  broke 
and  the  contrite  heart  (for  Lamb  knew  that  his  own  part  in  tl 
dual  life  was  sadly  flawed),  which  surely  in  this  case  would  n( 
be  despised.  He  tenderly  quotes  some  pretty  verses  of  h 
sister's,  and  concludes :  "  This  is  a  little  unfair,  to  tell  so  muc 
about  ourselves,  and  to  advert  so  little  to  your  letter,  so  fu 
of  comfortable  tidings  of  you  all.  .  .  .  That  you  may  go  c 
recovering  strength  and  peace  is  my  next  wish  to  Mary 
recovery." 

Twelve  years  later,  when  the  Lambs  moved  into  Russe 
Street,  Covent  Garden,  we  find  Mary  writing  lovingly  t 
Dorothy,  and  wishing  that  "  Rydal  Mount,  with  all  its  inhab 
tants  enclosed,"  could  be  transplanted  into  the  midst  of  Cover 
Garden.  "I  hope  we  shall  meet,"  she  goes  on,  "before  tt 
walking  faculties  of  either  of  us  fail ;  you  say  you  can  wal' 
fifteen  miles  with  ease,  [people  used  to  think  Dorothy  ovei 
walked  herself  into  premature  senility]  that  is  exactly  my  stin 
and  more  fatigues  me." 

Charles  Lamb  was  quick  to  congratulate  Wordsworth  c 
the  birth  of  his  son  Thomas  in  1806;  and  he  promptly  too 
him  into  his  confidence  about  the  failure  of  his  farce,  Mr.  h 
as  also  about  his  and  Mary's  better-starred  enterprise,  the  Tali 
from  Shakespeare.  He  never  lost  his  sense  of  a  certain  sel 
blindness,  a  certain  conceit,  in  Wordsworth  ;  he  never  considere 
himself  as  much  his  partisan  as  Coleridge  was.  Thus,  in  i8o< 
just  before  a  London  visit  of  Wordsworth's,  we  find  Lam 
writing :  **  Wordsworth,  the  great  poet,  is  coming  to  town  ;  h 
is  to  have  apartments  in  the  Mansion  House.  He  says  he  doe 
not  see  much  difficulty  in  writing  like  Shakespeare,  if  he  ha, 
a  mind  to  try  it.  It  is  clear,  then,  nothing  is  wanting  but  th 
mind.     Even  Coleridge  a  little  checked  at  this  hardihood  c 


"THE  FROLIC  AND  THE   GENTLE"  225 

Yet  we   must   not   make   too   much  of  such  little   asides. 

mb  knew  Wordsworth's  magnitude,  and  was  not  backward  to 
iicknowledge  it.  Even  about  the  Convention  of  Cintra  pamphlet 
jie  was  enthusiastic.  "  Its  power  over  me,"  he  wrote  to  Cole- 
idge,  "  was  like  that  which  Milton's  pamphlets  must  have  had 
r)n  his  contemporaries,  who  were  tuned  to  them.  What  a  piece 
)f  prose ! " 

When  TJie  Excursion  came  out  in  1814,  Lamb  praised  it 
leartily,  as  we  shall  see  in  the  last  chapter. 

Then,  in  18 15,  came  the  first  collective  edition  of  the  poems, 
vlth  one  of  the  critical  essays.  Now  was  Lamb's  first  intro- 
luction  to  such  things  as  Laodamia  and  There  is  a  Yew-tree ; 
tnd  now,  indeed,  he  bowed  his  head.  For  the  moment,  and  in 
[iddressing  Wordsworth  himself,  he  came  very  near  enrolling 
Himself  with  the  Words worthians  proper.  He  was  afraid 
A^ordsworth  would  concede  even  an  image  or  a  phrase  to  the 
onventional  critics.  "  I  would  not  have  had  you  offer  up  the 
poorest  rag  that  lingered  upon  the  stript  shoulders  of  little 
\lice  Fell,  to  have  atoned  all  their  malice ;  I  would  not  have 
qven  'em  a  red  cloak  to  save  their  souls."  Yet  it  is  all,  of 
course,  contemporary  criticism  of  a  contemporary ;  it  is  not 
he  homage  of  posterity  to  a  classic,  which,  in  the  nature  of 
he  case,  is  a  very  different  matter.  He  cannot  resist  his  joke. 
What  is  good  for  a  bootless  henef  he  suddenly  asked  Mary,  as 
le  turned  the  pages.  A  shoeless  pea,  she  promptly  replied. 
,Vith  Wordsworth's  discourse  on  imagination.  Lamb  professed 
limself  satisfied. 

V^hQn  Peter  Bell  "NdiS  published  in  1819,  Lamb  complained 
•f  it  as  being  too  lyrical  It  is  not  quite  clear  what  he  means 
)y  the  word  in  this  connection.  He  seems  to  have  specially 
iesented  the  form  of  the  poem,  by  which  a  group  of  people, 
'  The  Vicar  and  his  Dame,"  "  Stephen  Otter,"  and  the  rest,  are 
nterposed  between  the  poet  and  his  reader ;  but  there  is 
lothing  lyrical  in  such  a  form.  He  said,  in  181 1,  to  Henry 
"rabb  Robinson,  the  delightful  diarist,  and  most  literary  of 
parristers,  in  the  course  of  a  conversation  in  which  he  asserted 
Coleridge's  superiority  to  Wordsworth,  that  Wordsworth  forced 
he  reader  to  submit  to  his  individual  feelings ^  instead  of,  like 
Shakespeare,  becoming  everything  he  pleased.  The  evidential 
-alue  of  reported  talk  is  very  slight:  so  much  depends  on 
Q 


226  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS  CIRCLE 

context,  on  tone,  and  a  score  of  things  which  the  diarist  does  not 
or  cannot  record.  The  above  dictum,  as  it  stands,  is  so  dis- 
creditable to  Lamb's  critical  power,  that  one  feels  something 
essential  must  be  left  out.  Certainly  the  critical  honours  were 
with  Crabb  Robinson,  when  he  rejoined  that  this  so-called 
inferiority  '*  lay  very  much  in  the  lyrical  character."  Still. 
Lamb  must  have  said  something  of  the  sort ;  and  it  is  probably 
true  that  Wordsworth  was  **too  lyrical,"  too  abstract,  too 
egoistic — in  the  sense  in  which  all  lyrical  poetry  tends  to  be 
egoistic — to  ravish  the  heart  of  one  so  dramatic  and  concretely 
human  as  the  Fleet  Street-loving  Charles  Lamb. 

Lamb  had  a  great  fancy  for  another  humorously  didactic 
poem  of  Wordsworth's,  The  Waggoner,     It  had  been  written  in 
1805,  and   Lamb  had  seen  it  in    manuscript.     He  persuaded^ 
Wordsworth  to  publish  it  immediately  after  Peter  Bell ;  and  the' 
poet  pleased  him  by  a  gracious,  though  very  temperate,  dedica- 
tory letter,  in  which   he   acknowledged  the   pleasure  he  hadi 
derived   from    Lamb's  writings,  and  the  *'  high  esteem "  with 
which  he  was  truly  his.     (We  must  remember  that  there  were 
as  yet  no  Essays  of  Elia,  and  that  the  only  writings  of  Lamb's! 
from  which  Wordsworth,  in  18 19,  could  derive  pleasure,  were 
Rosamond    Gray^    John    Woodvill,    some   of    the    Tales  from 
Shakespeare^  the  notes  to  the  Specimeyis  of  Dramatic  Poetry^] 
and  one  or  two  critical  essays.)     Lamb  did  well,  certainly,  to 
unearth  the  story,  so  delightfully  and  so  humorously  told,  of  the 
thirsty   carter   and    his   toiling   team ;   he  rightly  praised   the 
"beautiful  tolerance"  of  the  poem.     For,  alas !  Benjamin,  the 
waggoner,  was,  as    we  have  hinted,  and  as  Burns  would  havcj 
called    him,   a    "  drouthy   neebor "  ;    and   every    inn    between  \ 
Ambleside  and  Keswick  was  for  him  a  door  into  the  nether: 
regions.     The    poem    follows   him    on    one   of    his   northward 
journeys,  full  of  good  resolutions;  past  the  "Dove  and  Olive 
Bough  "  at  Town  End,  past  the  "  Swan  "  at  Grasmere,  his  virtue 
as  yet  quite  safe.     But  on  the  ascent  of  the  Raise,  there  is  a 
bewildering  thunderstorm   in   the   hot    June    night,    and    the 
waggoner  forgathers  with  a  sailor  and    his  wife.      The  sailor 
has  a  donkey,  and  his  wife  a  baby  ;  and  the  two  storm-stressed 
parties  join  together,  the  woman  and  her  child  safe  under  the 
hood  of  the  waggon.     As  they  pass  Wytheburn,  on  the  drop  to 
Thirlmere,  the  fatal  sounds  of  fiddling  issue  from  the  "  Cherry 


"THE  FROLIC   AND  THE   GENTLE ^^  227 

ree,"    and    Benjamin's    virtue    gives    way    under    the    new 
•rain. 

"  Nor  has  thought  time  to  come  and  go, 

To  vibrate  between  yes  and  no  ; 

For,  cries  the  Sailor,  '  Glorious  chance 

That  blows  us  hither  ! — let  him  dance, 

Who  can  or  will ! — my  honest  soul, 

Our  treat  shall  be  a  friendly  bowl ! ' 

He  draws  him  to  the  door,  '  Come  in, 

Come,  come,'  cries  he  to  Benjamin  ! 

And  Benjamin — ah,  woe  is  me  ! 

Gave  the  word — the  horses  heard 

And  halted,  though  reluctantly." 

After  some  flowing  bowls  have  circulated,  the  sailor  goes  out, 
id  returns  with  a  wonderful  model  of  a  man-of-war — the 
'anguard,  flagship  at  the  Battle  of  the  Nile  ;  and  at  sight  of  it, 
ad  of  the  very  spot  where  Nelson  stood,  the  fiddlers  and  the 
dncers  cease,  and  you  might  hear  a  mouse  nibble.  But  then, 
c  Benjamin's  motion,  they  must  drink  to  the  great  admiral, 
tDugh  the  very  mastiff,  chained  under  the  waggon  outside, 
r.tles  his  chain  in  protest.  After  two  hours  of  this  kind  of 
t  ng,  the  cavalcade  starts  again  for  the  run  by  the  lake,  the 
nistiff  and  the  donkey  tied  side  by  side,  much  to  their  mutual 
iii^onvenience,  and  the — 

I"  Va7iguard^  following  close  behind, 
Sails  spread,  as  if  to  catch  the  wind  ! " 
j  At  last  come  the  signs  of  morning ;  the  waking  of  the  birds 
irSt.  John's  Vale;  the  rosy  light  on  Skiddaw.  Here  lies  the 
iriginative  value  of  the  poem  ;  in  the  contrast  and  antagonism 
8(1  subtly  indicated,  between  the  nocturnal  pleasures  of  the 
herry  Tree,"  and  the  beauties  of  the  morning. 

"  The  mists,  that  o'er  the  streamlet's  bed 
CI]  Hung  low,  begin  to  rise  and  spread  ; 

rMk  Even  while  I  speak,  their  skirts  of  grey 

,  lH  Are  smitten  by  a  silver  ray  ; 

And  lo  ! — up  Castrigg's  naked  steep 

(Where,  smoothly  urged,  the  vapours  sweep 
S'H  Along — and  scatter  and  divide, 

[eiH  Like  fleecy  clouds  self-multiplied) 

>(;H  The  stately  waggon,  is  ascending, 

With  faithful  Benjamin  attending, 

Apparent  now  beside  his  team — 

Now  lost  amid  a  glittering  steam  : 


« 


228  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS  CIRCLE 

And  with  him  goes  his  Sailor-friend, 
By  this  time  near  their  journey's  end  ; 
And,  after  their  high-minded  riot, 
Sickening  into  thoughtful  quiet ; 
As  if  the  morning's  pleasant  hour 
Had  for  their  joys  a  killing  power. 
And,  sooth,  for  Benjamin  a  vein 
Is  opened  of  still  deeper  pain 
As  if  his  heart  by  notes  were  stung 
From  out  the  lowly  hedge-rows  flung ; 
As  if  the  Warbler  lost  in  light 
Reproved  his  soarings  of  the  night." 

The  dinoument  may  be  fancied  ;  the  wrath  of  Benjamii 
master  at  the  fresh  outbreak  ;  the  enigmatical  appearance 
the  party,  and  the  Waggoner's  final  dismissal. 

"  All  past  forgiveness  is  repealed  ; 
And  thus,  and  through  distempered  blood 
On  both  sides,  Benjamin  the  good. 
The  patient,  and  the  tender-hearted,  \ 

Was  from  his  team  and  waggon  parted  ; 
When  duty  of  that  day  was  o'er. 
Laid  down  his  whip — and  served  no  more." 

Excellent  as  The  Waggoner  is,  Wordsworth  was  right  wh 
he  felt  that  in  Peter  Bell  there  were  "  a  higher  tone  of  imagin 
tion  "  and  "  deeper  touches  of  feeling."  Lamb  sturdily  preferr 
The  Waggoner;  partly,  perhaps,  because  (and,  indeed,  so 
plainly  hints)  he  was  himself  sensitive  to  Benjamin's  temptatior 
"Methinks  there  is  a  kind  of  shadowing  affinity  between  t 
subject  of  the  narrative  and  the  subject  of  the  dedication." 

The  Lambs'  modest  London  dwellings  continued  to 
regular  resorts  of  Wordsworth  as  the  years  went  on,  and  t 
friendship  never  felt  the  passage  of  a  single  cloud.  There  is 
delightful  letter  of  Charles's  to  Dorothy  Wordsworth,  dat 
November  25,  1819,  in  which  the  writer  describes  his  experienc 
in  introducing  little  Willy  Wordsworth,  the  poet's  younge 
child,  now  a  boy  of  nine,  to  the  London  sights.  "  Till  yeste 
day,"  Lamb  writes,  "  I  had  barely  seen  him  [Willy],  but  ye 
terday  he  gave  us  his  small  company  to  a  bullock's  heart,  ai 
I  can  pronounce  him  a  lad  of  promise.  .  .  .  He  has  observatic 
and  seems  thoroughly  awake.  .  .  .  Being  taken  over  WaterL 


"THE   FROLIC  AND  THE   GENTLE'^  229 

Iridge,  he  remarked,  that  if  we  had  no  mountains,  we  had  a  fine 
ver  at  least ;  which  was  a  touch  of  the  comparative  :  but  then 
e  added,  in  a  strain  which  argued  less  for  his  future  abilities  as 
political  economist,  that  he  supposed  they  must  take  at  least 
pound  a  week  toll.  Like  a  curious  naturalist,  he  inquired  if 
le  tide  did  not  come  up  a  little  salty.  .  .  .  He  put  another 
uestion,  as  to  the  flux  and  reflux  ;  which  being  rather  cunningly 
vaded  than  artfully  solved  by  that  she-Aristotle,  Mary — who 
luttered  something  about  its  getting  up  an  hour  sooner  and 
Doner  every  day — he  sagely  replied,  'Then  it  must  come  to 
le  same  thing  at  last ; '  which  was  a  speech  worthy  of  an 
ifant  Halley !  The  lion  in  the  'Change  by  no  means  came  up 
3  his  ideal  standard ;  so  impossible  is  it  for  Nature,  in  any  of 
er  works,  to  come  up  to  the  standard  of  a  child's  imagination  ! 
.  .  William's  genius,  I  take  it,  leans  a  little  to  the  figurative  ; 
)r,  being  at  play  at  tricktrack  (a  kind  of  minor  billiard-table, 
'hich  we  keep  for  smaller  wights,  and  sometimes  refresh  our 
vvn  mature  fatigues  with  taking  a  hand  at),  not  being  able  to 
it  a  ball  he  had  iterate  aimed  at,  he  cried  out,  *  I  cannot  hit 
lat  beast!'  Now  the  balls  are  usually  called  men,  but  he 
ilicitously  hit  upon  a  middle  term  ;  a  term  of  approximation 
nd  imaginative  reconciliation ;  a  something  where  the  two 
nds  of  the  brute  matter  (ivory),  and  their  human  and  rather 
iolent  personification  into  men,  might  meet,  as  I  take  it — 
lustrative  of  that  excellent  remark,  in  a  certain  preface,  about 
nagination,  explaining,  '  Like  a  sea-beast  that  had  crawled 
)rth  to  sun  himself!'  *  Not  that  I  accuse  William  Minor  of 
ereditary  plagiary,  or  conceive  the  image  to  have  come  ex  traduce. 
Lather  he  seemeth  to  keep  aloof  from  any  source  of  imitation, 
lid  purposely  to  remain  ignorant  of  what  mighty  poets  have 
tone  in  this  kind  before  him  ;  for,  being  asked  if  his  father  had 
ver  been  on  Westminster  Bridge,  he  answered  that  he  did  not 
now !  "  t 

In  1820  began  the  last  and  most  fruitful  section  of  Charles 
.amb's  life ;  for  it  was  in  August  of  that  year  that  the  first 
ssay  signed  "  Elia "  came  out  in  the  London  Magazine — the 

*  The  echo  of  a  phrase  from  Resolution  and  Independence. 

t  The  allusion,  of  course,  is  to  Wordworth's  great  sonnet,  beginning — 

"Earth  has  not  anything  to  show  more  fair." 


230  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 


vehicle,  as  we  remember,  of  the  Confessions  of  an  English  Opinn 
Eater.  The  world  will  always  know  and  love  Lamb  as  the  essayi: 
and  letter-writer — the  essayist  in  him  being  but  the  letter-write 
transfigured, — the  revealer,  under  the  restraint  of  a  dignifie 
tradition,  and  on  the  impulse  of  mature  literary  power,  of  th 
rich,  quaint,  lovable  personality  already  well  known  to  his  corrt 
spondents.  Month  after  month  the  exquisite  essays  stol  l 
forth,  "  taking  "  the  air  with  their  fragrance — a  fragrance  lik 
that  of  the  old  Spectator,  but  deeper,  sweeter,  subtler ;  with  th 
Addisonian  grace  and  humour,  and  unspoiled  by  the  Addisonia 
woodenness,  the  Addisonian  conventionalism.  The  Essays  c 
Elia,  appearing  when  they  did,  formed  one  of  the  best  link 
between  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries,  having  all  th 
sanity,  the  lucidity,  the  placid  reflectiveness  of  the  past  age,  an 
much  of  the  freshness,  the  truer  pathos,  the  purer  humour,  th 
courageous  individuality,  the  lyrical  charm,  of  the  new.  If  on 
cannot  speak  of  Lamb  as  exhibiting  the  "  Renascence  c 
Wonder"  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  words,  one  can  mos 
literally  describe  him  as  a  child  of  the  Romantic  Revival. 

Fourteen  years — no  more — passed  between  the  first  Essay  ^ 
Elia  and  Charles  Lamb's  quiet  death  at  Edmonton  in  183^ 
A  large  part  of  the  charm  of  the  essays  lies  in  their  directl; 
autobiographical  character  ;  in  the  portrayal,  absolutely  faithfu 
under  every  alias,  of  the  writer,  his  relations,  his  friends,  th 
scenery  of  the  different  stages  of  his  life.  Delicious  summer  day 
in  Hertfordshire,  nourishing  the  dreamy  bookish  childhood  ;  th 
cloisters  of  Christ's  and  the  purlieus  of  the  Temple  ;  holiday 
rambles  to  Margate,  to  Oxford,  but  seldom  very  far  afield;  th 
love-tragedy,  with  the  rainbow-faces  of  "  dream-children 
heightening  it.  Mary,  needing  hardly  any  of  her  brother' 
idealism  to  deepen  the  pathos  and  heighten  the  charm  of  th 
figure;  evenings  over  books  or  whist ;  occasional  visits  to  the  play 
such  is  the  stuff  of  the  essays.  Their  chief  scenery  is  furnishe( 
by  the  streets  of  London  ;  and  through  them  all  we  never  los 
sight  of  the  spare,  knee-breeched  figure  with  the  curling  hair  anc 
dark,  high-nosed,  Jewish-looking  face,  the  courteous  manners 
the  ready  smile,  and  the  incurable  stammer,  day  by  day  walking 
swiftly  eastwards  to  his  clerk's  work  at  the  India  House,  an( 
westward  or  north-westward  again  in  the  late  afternoon  to  quie 
literary  or  social  evenings.    More  and  more  irksome  became  th' 


CHARLES   LAMB  (AGP:D   ABOUT   o(>) 

FROM    THE    DRAWING    BV  THOMAS    WAGEMAX    IX    1824    OR    1825 


OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 

lL!FOR^i'^ 


"THE   FROLIC   AND   THE   GENTLE^'  231 

lerkly  drudgery,  until  at  last,  in  1825,  it  was  got  rid  of,  and 
^amb  could  escape  to  more  country  surroundings,  first  at 
i^nfield,  then  at  Edmonton.  In  those  later  years  the  intercourse 
/ith  the  Wordsworths  was  more  intermittent,  and  the  corre- 
pondence  flagged. J  But  it  was  none  the  less  congenial.  "I 
/ish,"  wrote  Dorothy  to  Crabb  Robinson,  in  the  year  after 
.amb's  retirement ;  "  I  wish  they  [the  Lambs]  would  now  and 
hen  let  us  see  their  handwriting ;  a  single  page  from  Charles 
^amb  is  worth  ten  postages."  There  were  occasional  letters, 
occasional  meetings  ;  and  the  friendship  was  strong  as  death. 
)ne  or  two  of  the  richest  and  most  vivid  of  Lamb's  latest  letters 
re  to  Wordsworth.  In  January,  1830,  he  writes  describing  the 
ights  and  shadows  of  his  superannuated  life  in  Enfield  lodgings. 
)n  the  whole,  the  shadows  predominate.  "  There  are  not  now 
he  years  that  there  used  to  be.  .  .  .  We  have  taken  a  farewell 
f  the  pompous  troublesome  life  called  housekeeping.  .  .  .  We 
ave  nothing  to  do  with  our  victuals  but  to  eat  them  ;  with  the 
arden,  but  to  see  it  grow  ;  with  the  tax-gatherer,  but  to  hear  him 
nock.  .  .  .  We  are  fed,  we  know  not  how  ;  quietists — confiding 
avens.  ...  In  dreams  I  am  in  Fleet  Market,  but  I  wake,  and 
ry  to  sleep  again.  .  .  .  What  have  I  gained  by  health  ?  In- 
Dlerable  dulness.  What  by  early  hours  and  moderate  meals .? 
L  total  blank."  He  hits  off  Enfield  :  "  A  little  teazing  image  of 
town  .  .  .  shops  two  yards  square,  half-a-dozen  apples,  and 
NO  penn'orth  of  overlooked  ginger-bread  ...  a  circulating 
brary  that  stands  still,  where  the  show-picture  is  a  last  year's 
'alentine,  and  whither  the  fame  of  the  last  ten  Scotch  novels 
50  the  Waverleys  were  often  called  in  those  days]  has  not  yet 
•avelled — (marry,  they  just  begin  to  be  conscious  of  the 
ledgauntlet),  to  have  a  new  plastered  flat  church,  and  to  be 
ishing  that  it  was  but  a  cathedral !  The  very  blackguards  here 
re  degenerate."  One  supposes  that  Lamb  always  loved  to  sing 
le  praises  of  London  in  the  pastoral  Wordsworth's  ear. 
Wordsworth's  eyesight  gave  him  much  trouble.  ''From  my 
en  I  return  you  condolence  for  your  decaying  sight ;  not  for 
nything  there  is  to  see  in  the  country,  but  for  the  miss  of  the 
leasure  of  reading  a  London  newspaper.  .  .  .  The  last  long  time 
heard  from  you,  you  had  knocked  your  head  against  something. 
)o  not  do  so  ;  for  your  head  (I  do  not  flatter)  is  not  a  knob,  or 
he  top  of  a  brass  nail,  or  the  end  of  a  nine-pin — unless  a 


1 


^3^  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

Vulcanian  hammer  could  fairly  batter  a  *  Recluse'  out  of  it 
then  would  I  bid  the  smirched  god  knock,  and  knock  lustily,  th 
two-handed  skinker." 

Three  years  later,  he  writes  under  new  shadows,  shadow 
admitting  of  no  humorous  exaggeration.  The  mental  clouc 
that  was  never  to  lift  was  falling  on  Dorothy  Wordsworth,  an( 
Mary  was  again  very  ill.  "  Her  illnesses,"  he  wrote,  "  encroacl 
yearly  .  .  .  half  her  life  she  is  dead  to  me,  and  the  other  hal 
is  made  anxious  with  fears  and  lookings  forward  to  the  nex 
shock.  ...  I  see  little  of  her.  .  .  .  Sunt  lachrymce  reruin  !  anc 
you  and  I  must  bear  it." 

In  this  letter,  Lamb  thanks  Wordsworth  for  his  "cordia 
reception  of  Eliay  We  possess  the  letter  to  which  Lamb's  wa: 
a  reply.  Wordsworth  had  written — "  I  have  to  thank  you  anc 
Moxon  for  a  delightful  volume,  not,  I  hope,  your  last,  of  Elia 
I  have  read  it  all,  except  some  of  the  popular  fallacies  which  ] 
reserve,  not  to  get  through  my  cake  all  at  once.  ...  I  am  no' 
sure  but  I  like  the  Old  China  and  The  lVeddi7ig  as  well  as  anj 
of  the  essays.  I  read  Love  vie  and  love  my  Dog  to  my  sistei 
this  morning.  .   .  .   She  was  much  pleased." 

In  the  February  before  Lamb's  death  he  wrote  his  lasl 
surviving  letter  to  Wordsworth.  It  is  short,  and  its  theme  is  o) 
transitory  interest,  but  one  or  two  phrases  make  it  immortal 
for  us  here.  He  asked  Wordsworth  to  help  a  proUg^e  at  Carlisle 
"  O,  if  you  can  recommend  her,  how  would  I  love  you — if  1 
could  love  you  better !  .  .  .  Moxon  tells  me  you  would  like  a 
letter  from  me  ;  you  shall  have  one.  This  I  cannot  mingle  up 
with  any  nonsense  which  you  usually  tolerate  from  C.  Lamb, 
Need  he  add  loves  to  wife,  sister,  and  all  ?  Poor  Mary  is  ilj 
again,  after  a  short  lucid  interval  of  four  or  five  months.  .  .  . 
Good  you  are  to  me.  Yours,  with  fervour  of  friendship,  for 
ever." 

In  July,  1834,  Coleridge  died  at  Highgate.  The  death  was 
saddening  to  Wordsworth,  but  shattering  to  Lamb.  Words- 
worth and  Coleridge  had  hardly  met  for  twenty  years  ;  yet,  as 
Wordsworth  told  Coleridge's  son,  "  his  mind  has  been  habitually 
present  with  me."  To  Lamb,  the  loss  of  Coleridge  was  the  loss 
of  a  vital  part  of  himself.  He  has  recorded  that  he  heard  of  the 
death  "  without  grief"  ;  but  that  was  only  because  the  hurt  was 
*'  too  deep  for  tears."     Coleridge's  spirit  haunted  him,  bringing 


"THE   FROLIC  AND  THE   GENTLE^'  233 

'^  m  acute  sense  of  desolation.     "  I  cannot  think  a  thought,  I 

'''Wnot  make  a  criticism  on  men  or  books,  without  an  ineffectual 

urning  and  reference  to  him."     He  would  suddenly  exclaim,  in 

he  midst  of  ordinary  conversation,  when  the  fact  gripped  him, 

'Coleridge  is  dead  I     He  was  not  long  to  suffer  under  the  de- 

■  irivation.     In  December,  1834,  his  own  hour  struck.     A  trip  on 
he  road,  a  fall,  a  slight  face- wound  ;  then  some  hours'  erysipelas; 

•  nd  Charles  Lamb  was  gone.     Mary  was  too  ill  to  realize  what 

■  lad  happened. 

Dorothy  Wordsworth  also  could  hardly  realize  the  event. 
)ut  Wordsworth  himself  bore  noble  tribute  to  it.  In  1835,  he 
Tote  a  poem  commemorating  Lamb,  and  in  after  years  a  kind 
f  prose  appreciation,  by  way  of  preface.  Moxon  had  asked  for 
[U  epitaph  or  elegy ;  and  Wordsworth  immediately,  with  his 
'abitual  fluency,  wrote  a  series  of  verses  which  could  not  be 
iscribed  on  Lamb's  gravestone,  partly  because  of  their  length, 
artly  because  of  the  intimacy  of  their  revelations.  If  the 
:  lepitaph  "  is  not  one  of  Wordsworth's  greatest  poems,  it  at  least 
Dntains  some  admirable  appreciation,  at  once  sympathetic  and 
iscriminating,  of  Lamb.  Wordsworth  truly  loved  his  odd 
-ondon  friend,  though  he  regretted  some  of  his  characteristics, 
is  unwise  conviviality,  and  what,  to  the  grave,  scantily  humorous 
3et,  seemed  his  over-Indulged  quizzicality.  His  tendency  to 
anter  seemed  to  show  a  lack  of  sincerity.  Wordsworth 
lought  that  both  Coleridge  and  he  had  learned  a  kind  of 
iperficial  untruthfulness  of  mind  at  Christ's. 

Yet,  when  Lamb  died,  it  was  his  goodness  that  stood  out 
^fore  Wordsworth's  mind  in  strongest  relief. 

"  To  a  good  Man  of  most  dear  memory 
This  Stone  is  sacred." 

aults  he  had,  as  we  all  have ;  yet  he  was,  before  all  things, 
inocent,  like  the  creature  whose  name  he  bore. 

"  From  the  most  gentle  creature  nursed  in  fields 
Had  been  derived  the  name  he  bore — a  name, 
Wherever  Christian  altars  have  been  raised, 
Hallowed  to  meekness  and  to  innocence  ; 
And  if  in  him  meekness  at  times  gave  way, 
Provoked  out  of  herself  by  troubles  strange. 
Many  and  strange,  that  hung  about  his  life  ; 
Still,  at  the  centre  of  his  being,  lodged 
A  soul  by  resignation  sanctified  : 


234  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

And  if  too  often,  self-reproached,  he  felt 

That  innocence  belongs  not  to  our  kind, 

A  power  that  never  ceased  to  abide  in  him, 

Charity,  'mid  the  multitude  of  sins 

That  she  can  cover,  left  not  his  exposed 

To  an  unforgiving  judgment  from  just  Heaven. 

Oh,  he  was  good,  if  e'er  a  good  Man  lived  !" 

His  genius  is  admirably  characterized ;  his — 

"  Knowledge  and  wisdom,  gained  from  converse  sweet 
With  books,  or  while  he  ranged  the  crowded  streets 
With  a  keen  eye,  and  overflowing  heart," 

pouring  out — 

"  Truth  in  works  by  thoughtful  love 
Inspired — works  potent  over  smiles  and  tears, 
And,  as  round  mountain-tops  the  lightning  plays, 
Thus  innocently  sported,  breaking  forth 
As  from  a  cloud  of  some  grave  sympathy. 
Humour  and  wild  instinctive  wit,  and  all 
The  vivid  flashes  of  his  spoken  words." 

The  poet  cannot  forget  Lamb's  scorn  of  the  country  ;  but 
recognizes  that  it  was  only  half  sincere,  and  he  feels  no  unfitneu 
in  his  burial  in  a  rural  place. 

"  Thou  wert  a  scorner  of  the  fields,  my  Friend, 
But  more  in  show  than  truth  ;  and  from  the  fields, 
And  from  the  mountains,  to  thy  rural  grave 
Transported,  my  soothed  spirit  hovers  o'er 
The  green  untrodden  turf,  and  blowing  flowers." 

The  wonderful  bond  between  brother  and  sister,  itself  i 
great  poem,  is  amply  celebrated  in  Wordsworth's  lines.  Ma' 
Lamb,  ten  years  her  brother's  senior,  had  at  first  been  to  hi 
as  a  mother. 

"  When  years 
Lifting  the  boy  to  man's  estate,  had  called 
The  long-protected  to  assume  the  part 
Ot  the  protector,  the  first  filial  tie 
Was  undissolved  ;  and,  in  or  out  of  sight, 
Remained  imperishably  interwoven 
With  life  itself." 

In  spite  of  all  the  adversity  and  tragedy,  Mary  was — 

"  The  meek. 
The  self-restraining,  and  the  ever-kind  ;" 
and — 

"  Thro'  all  visitations  and  all  trials," 


I 


*'THE   FROLIC   AND   THE   GENTLE"  235 

the  brother  and  sister  were  faithful  ; 

"  Like  two  vessels  launched 
From  the  same  beach  one  ocean  to  explore 
With  mutual  help,  and  sailing — to  their  league 
True,  as  inexorable  winds,  or  bars 
Floating  or  fixed  of  polar  ice,  allow." 

A.nd  the  lines  end  worthily  on  the  image  of  the  two-in-one — 

"  O  gift  divine  of  quiet  sequestration  ! 
The  hermit,  exercised  in  prayer  and  praise, 
And  feeding  daily  on  the  hope  of  heaven, 
Is  happy  in  his  vow  .  .  .  but  happier  far 
Was  to  your  souls,  and,  to  the  thoughts  of  others, 
A  thousand  times  more  beautiful  appeared, 
Your  dual  loneliness.     The  sacred  tie 
Is  broken  ;  yet  why  grieve  ?  for  Time  but  holds 
His  moiety  in  trust." 

With  the  truth  and  love  of  this  careful  tribute  we  are  well 

latisfied.     But  perhaps  the  phrase  in  the  Extempore  Effusion  on 

ut:t^^  Death  of  James  Hogg  written  in  the  same  year,  the  phrase 

'•ffiiedicated  to  Lamb,  in  the  stanzas  sacred  to  him  and  to  Coleridge, 

peaks  with  equal  truth  and  a  deeper  tenderness. 

I  "  Nor  has  the  rolling  year  twice  measured 

From  sign  to  sign  its  steadfast  course, 
Since  every  mortal  power  of  Coleridge 
Was  frozen  at  its  marvellous  source  ; 


"  The  rapt  one,  of  the  godlike  forehead. 
The  heaven-eyed  creature  sleeps  in  earth 
And  Lamb,  the  frolic  and  the  gentle, 
Has  vanished  from  his  lonely  hearth." 


CHAPTER   XI 
WORDSWORTH,  SCOTT,   AND   CHRISTOPHER   NORTI 

IT  is  tempting  to  compare  and  contrast  Wordsworth  an 
Walter  Scott.  Born  within  a  year  of  one  another,  bot 
men  were  burly,  honest  northerners  ;  both  were  intense  patriots 
both  were  chivalrously  devoted  to  literature  ;  both  were  grea 
literary  originators  and  reformers.  Nor  was  this  all.  Both,  i 
a  remarkable  degree,  gave  spiritual  significance  to  the  region 
in  which  their  lots  were  cast.  To  a  greater  extent  than  an 
other  single  man,  Scott  gave  Scotland,  topographical  Scotlanc 
modern  Scotland,  a  soul  He  revealed  it  to  the  world,  not  a 
a  guide-book,  but  as  a  poet,  does.  And,  similarly,  Wordswort 
was  much  more  than  a  dweller  among  the  Lakes  ;  he  becam, 
the  very  "  breath  and  finer  spirit "  of  them  all ;  in  his  geniij; 
they  live  and  have  their  being. 

The  parallelism  can  hardly  be  extended.  As  poets,  indeec 
Wordsworth  and  Scott  were  nearer  than  they  knew,  and  tha 
Wordsworth's  rather  scornful  estimate  allowed  ;  nearer  in  the 
lyrical  strain,  nearer  in  their  feeling  for  Nature.  But  thei 
intellectual  methods  were  essentially  dissimilar.  Wordswort 
was  intensely  subjective,  Scott  cheerily  and  self-effacingly  objec 
tive.  Wordsworth  never  wrote  without  looking  into  his  ow, 
thinking  and  feeling  interior;  Scott  wrote  only  about  a 
external  world,  conceived  by  him  as  such,  and  nothing  men 
All  his  life  Scott  was  looking  on  at  a  splendid  pageantry,  an 
showing  it  to  mankind,  he  himself  being  a  mere  showmai 
hardly  visible.  For  Wordsworth,  too,  there  was  a  pageant — 
pageant  of  Nature,  a  pageant  of  Man  ;  but  it  was  mysteriousl 
unrolled  out  of  his  own  intelligence  and  imagination  ;  extei 
nality  supplied  only  raw  material  and  stimulus.  So  far  fror 
being  self-efifacing,  Wordsworth  had  much  of  that  egoism  whicl 

236 


WORDSWORTH,   SCOTT,   AND   NORTH  237 

IS  Coleridge  said  about  Milton,  is  a  revelation  of  spirit — spirit 
jrhich  is  universal.  In  a  word,  Wordsworth  was  a  philosopher  ; 
kott  was  not. 

Again,  in  Romanticism  they  took  widely  different  ways. 
except  in  parts  of  his  poetry,  those  parts  most  lyrically  inspired, 
nd  except  in  his  Scottish  character-drawing,  Scott,  in  his 
Romanticism,  never  got  much  beyond  the  mere  idealization  of 
tiedievalism  and  feudalism.  "Gothicism"  of  this  kind  was 
lever  much  to  Wordsworth.  His  point  of  view  was  too  universal 
0  incline  him  to  it ;  it  was  too  heavily  laden  with  trappings 

n  nd  tinsel  for  his  naked  simplicity  of  taste.  Even  the  Ancient 
Mariner ^  the  most  arrestingly  distinctive  of  Lyrical  Ballads,  was 
bo  romantic  for  him.    As  the  Ancient  Mariner  is  to  the  Tinier n 

^  ibbey  lines,  so — we  may  put  it — was  the  Romanticism  which 

'^  >cott  practised  to  the  romance  of  Wordsworth. 

Yet  the  two  great  pioneers  were  excellent  friends.     Scott 

Ijl^as  sweetly,  wholly,  loyal  to,  and  admiring  of,  Wordsworth; 
ordsworth,  though  he  sniffed  at  Scott's  poetry,  and  almost 
nored  his  novels,  loved  the  man,  and  felt,  in  spite  of  himself, 
is  greatness.     They  met  for  the  first  time  in   1803,  the  year 

•'l^hen  Wordsworth  first  set  foot  in  Scotland.  It  was  a  great 
•ear  in  Wordsworth's  life,  not  only  because  he  first  saw  Scott 
nd  Scotland,  but  because  he  found  there  one  of  the  critical 
ispirations  of  his  poetry.  It  was  a  great  year  also  in  Dorothy's 
fe,  because  she  was  her  brother's  companion,  and  has  left  her 
npressions  in  a  diary  which  is  a  kind  of  Wordsworthian  prose- 
oem.  In  August,  1803,  they  set  out  with  Coleridge,  Mrs. 
Vordsworth  staying  at  home  with  her  two-months'-old  first 
aby.  Coleridge  played  his  wonted  unsatisfactory  part  in  the 
xpedition.  He  was,  as  Wordsworth  said,  "in  bad  spirits,  and 
omewhat  too  much  in  love  with  his  own  dejection."  He  got 
s  far  as  Loch  Lomond  ;  but  in  the  third  week  of  the  tour,  the 
bundant  and  apparently  endless  Scottish  rains  in  a  west 
ountry  August  so  completed  his  dejection  that  at  Tarbet  he 
determined  to  send  his  clothes  to  Edinburgh  and  make  the 
?est  of  his  way  thither."  They  left  Arrochar  all  together. 
; Coleridge  accompanied  us  a  little  way;  we  portioned  out  the 
;  iontents  of  our  purse  before  our  parting  ;  and,  after  we  had  lost 
Sght  of  him,  drove  heavily  along,"  So  Dorothy  wrote.  We 
iiay  be  sure  that  the  heaviness  was  not  caused  by  mud  alone. 


238  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

Many  a  sigh  Coleridge  drew  from  that  sympathetic  heart  fro 
first  to  last.  In  the  solemn  recesses  of  Glen  Croe  her  though; 
were  "full  of  Coleridge,"  and  the  image  of  him  "sickly  ar 
alone"  was  as  depressing  as  the  savage  place  in  the  ble? 
weather. 

Coleridge  apart,  the  tour  was  a  bright  success.  The  travelle 
progressed  at  their  leisure,  in  an  Irish  car  drawn  by  one  not  tc 
amiable  horse,  by  way  of  Carlisle  to  Dumfries.  Here  Word 
worth  did  homage  to  Burns,  who  had  lain  just  seven  years  : 
his  grave  in  St.  Michael's  kirkyard,  no  stone  as  yet  marking  tl 
place.  He  did  his  utmost  towards  a  just  estimate  of  his  gre; 
predecessor.  He  wrote  three  poems  in  Burns's  own  characterist 
metre,  in  which  moral,  hardly,  if  at  all,  outweighs  literary,  crit 
cism.  The  spiritual  kinship  between  himself  and  the  Scottis 
lyrist  he  fully  recognizes.  They  were  "true  friends,  thoug 
diversely  inclined."  As  he  looked  across  the  Solway  to  the  dii 
heights  of  Skiddaw,  he  regretted  that  he  had  not  known  Burns 

"  Huge  Criffel's  hoary  top  ascends 
By  Skiddaw  seen  ; 
Neighbours  we  were,  and  loving  friends 
We  might  have  been." 

In  a  nobler  verse  he  bore  his  tribute  to  Burns's  share  in  th 
renascence  of  British  poetry.     It  was  Burns 

"  Whose  light  I  hailed  when  first  it  shone, 
And  showed  my  youth 
How  Verse  may  build  a  princely  throne 
On  humble  truth." 

Up  Nithsdale,  past  Ellisland,  the  party  went,  still  thinking  c 
Burns.  The  place  was  alive  with  his  genius.  Wordsworth  put 
to  Nature  a  question  about  Burns's  poetry  which  we  ma; 
perhaps  put  about  his  own.     "  Let  us  pause,"  he  says — 

"  And  ask  of  Nature,  from  what  cause 
And  by  what  rules 
She  trained  her  Burns  to  win  applause 
That  shames  the  Schools." 

He  thinks  of  him  much  as  Shelley  thought  of  Keats  in  Adonais 
as  "  made  one  with  Nature." 

"  He  rules  'mid  winter  snows,  and  when 
Bees  fill  their  hives." 


WORDSWORTH,   SCOTT,   AND   NORTH  239 

0,   Then  come  stanzas  of  moral  reflection  and  regret,  much  too 
itistinct  with  charity  to  be  didactic — 

^f  "  Sweet  Mercy  !  to  the  gates  of  Heaven 

2i|  This  Minstrel  lead,  his  sins  forgiven  ; 

The  rueful  conflict,  the  heart  riven 
With  vain  endeavour, 


And  memory  of  Earth's  bitter  leaven, 
Effaced  for  ever. 

*'  But  why  to  Him  confine  the  prayer, 
When  kindred  thoughts  and  yearnings  bear 
On  the  frail  heart  the  purest  share 

With  all  that  live  ?— 
The  best  of  what  we  do  and  are, 

Just  God,  forgive  ! " 


Hi 

jA  It  was   before  Coleridge   left   the  Wordsworths   that   they 

^;acountered   at  Inversnaid,  on  Loch  Lomond,  that  Highland 

,^i  who  lives  for  ever  in  one  of  Wordsworth's  most  exquisite 

perns — exquisite   because  the  whole  range  of  poetry  hardly 

liords   a  stronger   instance   of  nearly  sexless   lyrical   rapture 

3. ere  sex-feeling  might  be  strong.  It  was  by  Loch  Katrine 
it  the  mysterious  "  Stepping  Westward "  question  was  put 
ili  answered.     Then  by  Loch  Awe  and  Kilchurn  Castle,  the 

'•*!hild  of  loud-throated  war,"  with  a  glimpse  of  Mull;  across 
:Iough  Perthshire  to  Edinburgh ;  then  southward  to  the 
Teed.  They  arrived  at  Edinburgh  on  September  15.  Walter 
Sott  was  at  this  time  an  active  and  gifted  young  advocate  of 
:Irty-two,  the  Sheriff  of  Selkirkshire,  with  a  great  love  of 
).lads,  German  and  British,  and  a  vast  multifarious  knowledge 

-pithe  antiquities  and  poetic  lore  of  the  Border  country,  which 

:  :,i«had  embodied  two  years  previously  in  the  Minstrelsy  of  the 
:SHtish  Bo7'dgr,  With  his  wife  and  children  he  lived  at  Lass- 
yde,  near  Edinburgh  ;  and  there,  in  that  early  home,  Scott 
11:1  Wordsworth  had  their  first  meeting.  Their  first  night  in 
Einburgh  the  Wordsworths  spent  at  the  White  Hart  in  the 
jissmarket,  "which  we  conjectured,"  wrote  Dorothy,  "would 
3(ter  suit  us  than  one  in  a  more  fashionable  part  of  the  town." 

,  Fday,  i6th,  was  a  wet  day,  and,  in  a  city  in  which  so  much 
iC'ends  on  distant  views,  this  was  unlucky  for  the  sightseers. 
*  'he  Firth  of  Forth  was  entirely  hidden  from  us,  and  all  distant 
3hcts,  and  we  strained  our  eyes  till  they  ached,  vainly  trying 


:i 


240  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CHICLE 

to  pierce  through  the  thick  mist."     Nevertheless,  "  Edinbur ; 
far  surpassed  all  expectation." 

That  evening  they  went  to  Rosslyn  to  sleep  ;  and  on  tj 
Saturday  morning,  fine  after  the  rain,  they  walked  throu 
Hawthornden  to  Lasswade.  The  Wordsworths  were  early  fo . 
like  all  tourists  in  new  places ;  and  when  they  knocked  : 
Walter  Scott's  door,  neither  he  nor  his  wife  was  up.  They  h  1 
to  wait  in  a  large  sitting-room ;  but  at  last  the  Sheriff  came  i 
with  his  limp  and  his  durr  a.nd  his  hearty  manner — his  "gra; 
cordiality,"  as  Wordsworth  called  it  The  guests  had  breakf  ■ 
with  the  Scotts,  and  stayed  until  two  o'clock,  when  Sc : 
accompanied  them  back  to  Rosslyn.  We  can  fancy  from  wl : 
stores  the  Sheriff  would  pour  forth  his  delightful  talk,  and  h 
memorable  he  would  make  those  hours.  Wordsworth  vj 
struck,  as  in  after  years  he  always  was,  with  Scott's  modesty  ;  '.] 
cheerfulness,  his  benevolence,  his  hopeful  views  of  man  and  1j 
world.  And  he  was  privileged  to  hear,  that  day,  the  first  fcr 
cantos  of  the  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel,  which  was  not  to  ; 
published  for  two  years,  "  partly  read  and  partly  recited,  son  • 
times  in  an  enthusiastic  style  of  chant."  Wordsworth  v> 
"greatly  delighted"  by  the  "novelty  of  the  manners,  the  clc 
picturesque  descriptions,  and  the  easy,  glowing  energy  of  mil 
of  the  verse."  Would  that  there  had  always  been  the  sa ) 
appreciative  note  in  his  criticism  of  Scott's  poetry  ! 

The  Wordsworths  were  going  south  to  see  the  Tweed  a|f' "J^ 
the  storied  places  through  which  it  flows  ;  and  Scott,  too,  VJ 
on  the  point  of  starting  for  the  Jedburgh  Assizes.  They  stru: 
Tweed  at  Peebles,  and  there,  on  a  Sunday  morning,  Wori- 
worth  wrote  the  sonnet  of  rebuke  to  the  "unworthy  Lor' 
Douglas  for  felling  the  trees  that  clothed  the  nakedness 
Neidpath  Castle — a  wrong 

"  Which  Nature  scarcely  seems  to  heed  ; 
For  shelter'd  places,  bosoms,  nooks,  and  bays, 
And  the  pure  mountains,  and  the  gentle  Tweed, 
And  the  green  silent  pastures  yet  remain." 

They  slept  at  Clovenford  that  night,  and  made  the  memoral : 
decision   to  leave   Yarrow   unvisited,   though   Dorothy   keei 
wished  to  see  the  haunted  stream. 


I 


*'  Then  said  my  winsome  Marrow, 
'  Whate'er  betide  we'll  turn  aside 
And  see  the  Braes  of  Yarrow.' " 


( 


li 


WORDSWORTH,   SCOTT,   AND  NORTH  241 

Her  brother's  exquisite,  if  fallacious,  dialectic,  carried  the  day. 

"  Let  beeves  and  home-bred  kine  partake 

The  sweets  of  Burnmill  Meadow, 

The  swan  on  still  St.  Mary's  Lake 

Float  double,  swan  and  shadow. 
'•  We  will  not  see  them,  will  not  go 

To-day  nor  yet  to-morrow  ; 

Enough  if  in  our  hearts  we  know 
...  There's  such  a  place  as  Yarrow." 

4j  On  Monday  morning  to  Melrose  ;  and  there,  on  their  way  to 
^:  the  Abbey  after  breakfast,  they  met  Scott  in  the  street,  and  he 
•^ivent  with  them.  What  an  opportunity,  and  what  a  guide! — 
f^^ though  the  ruins  were  "flouted"  by  "gay  beams,"  and  not 
^  glimmering  in  moonshine. 

"  The  pillar'd  arches  were  over  their  head, 
And  beneath  their  feet  were  the  bones  of  the  dead." 

\11  that  day  the  two  poets  were  together  and  even  all  the 
j:  following  night ;  for  they  slept  in  the  same  room  at  the  inn. 
••,  jS'ext  day  Scott  went  on  to  Jedburgh,  and  the  Wordsworths 
;   [bllowed  the  river  to  Dryburgh,  where  Scott's  body  was  one  day 

0  be  laid.  They  intended  to  go  on  to  Kelso,  but  late  September 
;;  jains  drove  them   to  Jedburgh,  where   they   were  again  with 

|5C0tt.  They  lodged  with  that  excellent  and  young-hearted 
V  I  Matron  of  Jedborough  and  her  Husband  "  who  are  immortal 
n  Wordsworth's  verse.  It  was  the  wife  who,  though  over 
eventy,  would  not  grow  old  ;  the  husband  was  a  speechless 
/reck — 

"  With  legs  that  move  not,  if  they  can, 
And  useless  arms,  a  trunk  of  man. 
He  sits,  and  with  a  vacant  eye  ; 
A  sight  to  make  a  stranger  sigh  ! 

The  joyous  Woman  is  the  Mate 
Of  him  in  that  forlorn  estate  ! 

He  is  as  mute  as  Jedborough  Tower  ! 
She  jocund  as  it  was  of  yore 
With  all  its  bravery  on  ;  in  times 
When  all  alive  with  merry  chimes, 
Upon  a  sun-bright  morn  of  May, 

1  It  roused  the  Vale  to  holiday." 

''he  merry  old  dame  is  to  Wordsworth   as  eloquent  from  the 


242  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CHICLE 

heart  of  Nature,  as  the  Highland  Girl  herself.  Her's  was  nc 
thoughtless  gaiety  born  of  inexperience  of  pain  ;  she  had  knowi 
suffering  both  of  body  and  mind.  When  you  talked  to  hei 
there  were  times  when 

"  Some  inward  trouble  suddenly 
Broke  from  the  Matron's  strong  black  eye — 
A  remnant  of  uneasy  light, 
A  flash  of  something  over-bright ! " 

But  it  was  for  a  moment  only ;  victorious  and  wholesome  jo] 
soon  reasserted  itself  The  poet  learned  his  lesson  about  th^ 
potentialities  of  old  age. 

"  I  praise  thee,  Matron  !  and  thy  due 
Is  praise,  heroic  praise,  and  true  ! 
With  admiration  I  behold 
Thy  gladness  unsubdued  and  bold  ! 
Thy  looks,  thy  gestures,  all  present 
The  picture  of  a  life  well  spent  : 
This  do  I  see  ;  and  something  more  ; 
A  strength  unthought  of  heretofore  ! 
DeHghted  am  I  for  thy  sake  ; 
And  yet  a  higher  joy  partake  : 
Our  Human-nature  throws  away 
Its  second  twilight,  and  looks  gay  ; 
A  land  of  promise  and  of  pride 
Unfolding,  wide  as  life  is  wide." 

Those  were  pleasant  days  at  Jedburgh ;  the  Sheriff  woul 
come  to  supper  when  the  Court  rose,  and  go  on  reciting  the  Lay 
or  he  would  join  the  brother  and  sister  in  their  rambles  by  th 
woody  Jed,  or  knee-deep  in  the  ferns  of  Ferniehurst,  whic 
reminded  Dorothy  of  Alfoxden.  Young  Will  Laidlaw,  to( 
was  there,  "as  shy,"  Dorothy  found,  "as  any  of  our  Grasmer 
lads."  He  had  a  farm  in  Yarrow,  and  a  poet's  soul,  and  ws 
eager  to  see  Wordsworth.  He  was  to  write  "  Lucy's  Flittin' 
and  other  sweet  genuine  Scottish  vernacular  lyrics  ;  to  be  Scott 
land-steward  and  amanuensis  at  Abbotsford,  and  to  try  to  hel 
his  helplessness  at  the  last.  "  Ha  !  Willie  Laidlaw !  "  the  dyin 
man  collected  himself  to  exclaim,  when  they  set  him  down  i^ 
the  dining-room  at  Abbotsford  after  the  sad  time  abroad  and  i, 
London  :  "  O  man,  how  often  have  I  thought  of  you  !  " 

Scott  accompanied  the  travellers  in  their  car  from  Jedburg 


WORDSWORTH,   SCOTT,   AND   NORTH  243 

to  Hawick,  the  ''Jedborough  Matron"  supplying  sandwiches 
and  cheesecakes  for  the  journey.  Scott  pointed  out  Ruberslaw 
and  Minto  Crags,  and  had  some  story  about  nearly  every  house 
they  passed.  This  was  the  last  day  of  his  company  ;  next 
morning  they  parted  at  Hawick,  after  a  wistful  look  from  the 
top  of  a  hill  toward  Scott's  and  Dandie  Dinmont's  Liddesdale. 
The  Scottish  tour  was  over ;  two  days  later  the  Wordsworths 
were  at  Dove  Cottage  again  with  Mary  and  Joanna  Hutchinson, 
and  little  Johnny  asleep  in  a  clothes-basket  by  the  fire. 

Here  was  the  making  of  a  mighty  friendship !  Writing  to 
Scott  a  week  or  two  later,  Wordsworth  used  strong  words  about 
it.  "  My  sister  and  I  often  talk  of  the  happy  days  that  we  spent 
in  your  company.  Such  things  do  not  occur  often  in  life. 
If  we  live,  we  shall  meet  again.  That  is  my  consolation,  when 
I  think  of  these  things.  Scotland  and  England  sound  like 
division,  do  what  we  can  ;  but  we  really  are  but  neighbours,  and 
if  you  were  no  further  off,  and  in  Yorkshire,  we  should  think  so. 
Farewell !  God  prosper  you  and  all  that  belongs  to  you ! 
Your  sincere  friend — for  such  I  will  call  myself,  though  slow  to 
use  a  word  of  such  solemn  meaning  to  any  one." 

Two  years  later,  in  1805,  Scott  was  in  Lakeland,  and  went  to 
see  Wordsworth  at  Dove  Cottage.  Authentic  memories  of  this 
visit  are  scanty :  Mrs.  Scott  was  with  her  husband ;  was  there 
accommodation  for  the  couple  at  the  Town  End  cottage  ? 
,  Tradition  asserts  that  Scott  himself  was  an  inmate  ;  and  that, 
!  finding  his  host's  water-drinking  minage  a  little  chilly,  he  went 
'  for  a  daily  morning-refresher  to  the  inn  at  Grasmere.  Quite 
certain  it  is  that  on  an  August  day  Wordsworth,  Scott,  and 
Humphry  Davy  climbed  Helvellyn  together.  They  passed, 
as  they  mounted,  the  place  where  the  body  of  a  man  had  been 
found  that  year,  watched,  three  months  after  death,  by  his 
terrier  dog.  The  man  was  well  known  as  a  fisherman  and  lover 
of  the  hills.  Both  poets  commemorated  the  incident,  Scott 
in  long  lines  of  fluent  amphibrachs  ;  Wordsworth  in  one  of  his 
characteristic  lyrical  narratives  called  Fidelity,  It  was  the  dog's 
behaviour  which  moved  the  poets,  working  wholly  without 
collusion.  Wordsworth  greatly  admired  the  lines  in  which 
Scott  addressed  the  faithful  dumb  watcher — 

"  How  long  didst  thou  think  that  his  silence  was  slumber  ? 
When  the  wind  waved  his  garment,  how  oft  didst  thou  start  ?  " 


244  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS  CIRCLE 

Wordsworth  himself— so  he  tells  us— took  the  "diction"  of 
his  last  beautiful  stanza  from  peasant  lips — 

"  Yes,  proof  was  plain  that,  since  the  day 
When  this  ill-fated  Traveller  died, 
The  Dog  had  watched  about  the  spot, 

Or  by  his  master's  side  : 
How  7ioiirished  here  through  such  long  time 
He  knows,  who  gave  that  love  sublime; 
And  gave  that  strength  of  feeling,  great 
Above  allhujnan  estimate  !  " 

Subsequent  meetings,  at  the  Lakes,  in  London,  and  at 
Coleorton,  deepened  the  respect  and  affection  between  Words- 
worth and  Scott.  Yet  Scott  looked  askance  at  a  good  deal  in 
Wordsworth's  poetry ;  and  Wordsworth  allowed  himself  to 
wave  aside  the  whole  of  Scott's  in  a  very  lofty  manner.  Scott's 
disapprobation  was  hinted  with  the  infinite  modesty  and  delicacy 
characteristic  of  the  man.  He  pleaded  for  Wordsworth  with 
Jeffrey,  and  "  made  him  admire  "  this  and  that.  But  he  had  to' 
admit  that  Wordsworth  sometimes  "  got  beyond  him."  Though 
he  did  not  "  know  a  man  more  to  be  venerated  for  uprightness  of 
heart  and  loftiness  of  genius,"  he  "  differed  from  him  in  very  many 
points  of  taste."  "  Why  he  will  sometimes  choose  to  crawl  upon 
all-fours,  when  God  has  given  him  so  noble  a  countenance  to 
lift  to  heaven,  I  am  as  little  able  to  account  for,  as  for  his 
quarrelling  .  .  .  with  the  wrinkles  which  time  and  meditation 
have  stamped  his  brow  withal."  So  Scott  wrote  when  he  was  49, 
and  Wordsworth  50.  Seven  years  later,  Scott  put  down  more 
subtle  criticism  in  his  Journal.  He  remarked  that  something  in  his 
own  character  reminded  him  of  Wordsworth's  Matthew.  Then 
he  turns  aside  to  rebuke  Jeffrey  gently  for  his  inappreciation  of 
Matthezv.  Jeffrey  "  loves  to  see  imagination  best  when  it  is  bitted 
and  managed,  and  ridden  upon  the  grand  pas.  He  does  not 
make  allowance  for  starts  and  sallies  and  bounds,  when  Pegasus 
is  beautiful  to  behold,  though  sometimes  perilous  to  his  rider." 
This  is  exquisitely  put ;  and  the  Wordsworthian  simplicity,  over 
against  Jeffrey's  common  sense,  could  find  no  better  apology. 
But  then  Scott  has  a  word  for  Wordsworth  in  his  turn,  mixed 
with  a  thoughtful  self-estimate.  "  Not  that  I  think  the  amiable 
bard  of  Rydal  shows  judgment  in  choosing  such  subjects  as  the 
popular  mind  cannot  sympathize  in.     It  is  unwise  and  unjust  to 


WORDSWORTH,   SCOTT,   AND  NORTH  245 

himself.  I  do  not  compare  myself,  in  point  of  imagination,  with 
Wordsworth — far  from  it  ;  for  his  is  naturally  exquisite,  and 
highly  cultivated  from  constant  exercise.  But  I  can  see  as  many 
castles  in  the  clouds  as  any  man,  as  many  genii  in  the  curling 
smoke  of  a  steam-engine,  as  perfect  a  Persepolis  in  the  embers 
of  a  sea-coal  fire.  My  life  has  been  spent  in  such  day-dreams. 
But  I  cry  no  roast  meat.  There  are  times  when  a  man  should 
remember  what  Rousseau  used  to  say,  Tais-toi,  Jea^t  Jacques, 
car  on  ne  fentend pas  !  "  In  other  words,  it  was  excess,  rather 
than  defect,  of  imagination  which  Scott  blamed  in  Wordsworth  ;> 
and  he  blamed  it  more  for  the  sake  of  the  poet's  popularity  than 
for  anything  deeper. 

"Very  different  was  Wordsworth's  tone  about  the  poetry  of 

Scott.     He  seemed  unable  to  recognize  in  it  any  nobility  of 

tii  .Romanticism  ;  or  to  hail  it  as  a  genuine  agent  in  the  restoration 

acj !  of  the  beautiful,  as  a  renascence  of  wholesome  wonder  ;  as  the 

*ii:j  homely  harvest  of  a  seeing  eye  and  a  feeling  heart.     He  fixed 

::.  ihis  attention  on  the  narrative  flow,  and  thought  of  it  as  mere 

11;:  jrhymed  story-telling ;  he  thought  it  superficial  and  external ;  it 

3  3  ihad  for  him  none  of  the  depth  essential  to  his  conception  of  the 

aq  (higher  poetry.     He  blamed  the  carelessness  of  the  style.     A 

::::  deeper  objection  gives  us  pause.     Scott,  he  said,  was  not  tnte  to 

e :.  \NatiiJ/e ;  his  descriptions  were  addressed  to  the  ear,  not  to  the 

b  imind.      It  is  curious  to   contrast  with  this  judgment  that  of 

,:;::  iRuskin,   who,    when   he   wrote   the   third    volume   of    Modern 

hi.  painters,  was  no  mean  literary  critic.     In  that  volume  Ruskin 

3-  IdeHberately  takes  Scott,  in  his  poetry,  as  the  type  of  the  truest 

3b  modern  feeling  for  landscape  ;  and  if  one  merely  glances  at  the 

\x  [quotations  by  which  he  illustrates  and  supports  his  thesis,  it  is 

m:  difficult  to  disbelieve  in   its  soundness.     For  the  descriptions, 

C  phe  renderings  of  landscape  which  Scott  gives  us  in  his  poetry, 

\':.  bre  without  the  frigidity  and  conventionality,  the  polysyllabic 

?a.v  bomposity  which    do   something   to   spoil    his   descriptions   in 

Srose  ;  in  verse  he  attained  to  a  rapidity  which  was  not  mere 

laste,  but  the  unhesitating  expression  of  full  conviction ;  to  a 

.implicity  and  brevity  which  were  born  of  perfect  sincerity,  and 

vhich  enabled  him  to  minister  of  the  beautiful  to  all  who  were 

vorthy  to  receive  it. 

If  this  had  been  pointed  out  to  Wordsworth,  he  could  hardly 
lave  gainsaid  it.     But  he  would  still  have  insisted   that  the 


246  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

beauty  given  by  Scott  was  for  the  ear,  not  for  the  mind.  He 
probably  never  paused,  as  Ruskin  did,  over  Scott's  Nature- 
poetry  ;  he  read  it  or  heard  it,  as  part  and  parcel  of  a  piece  of 
mere  story-telling  ;  and  his  general  sense  of  externality,  of  mere 
picturesqueness  and  scene-painting,  remained  as  his  total  impres- 
sion. In  Wordsworth  himself,  Nature,  in  detail  as  in  general, 
was  too  much  the  mere  embodiment  and  vehicle  of  the  Universe 
to  be  accepted  as  Scott — a  true  poet,  but  no  philosopher — pre- 
sented her.  For  Wordsworth,  the  truth  of  Nature,  which,  in  his 
estimation,  Scott  failed  to  reach  and  convey,  was  indeed  that 
which  never  entered  into  the  circle  of  Scott's  mind — her  mystical 
personality,  her  sublime  unity.  All  else  was  mere  surface-work, 
mere  entertainment.  It  was  a  hasty  and  unjust  judgment,  and 
it  did  both  Scott  and  Wordsworth  harm. 

But  Wordsworth,  though  he  may  have  fallen  short  as  Scott's 
reader,  showed  no  shortcoming  as  his  friend.     In  the  radiance 
of  that  sweet  personality,  criticism  was  quickly  lost  in  love; 
before  the  totality  of  that  astonishing  achievement,  all  men  have 
to  bow  the  knee.     The  fall  of  Scott,  the  collapse  of  his  fortunes, 
the  fatal  breach  in  his  health,  the  certainty  of  death  on  the  mere 
confines  of  old  age,  gave  deep  pain  to  Wordsworth  as  it  did  to 
all  who  knew  him,  all  to  whom  he  was  known.     Early  in  1830, 
when  he  was  not  yet  59,  Scott  had  his  first  apoplectic  stroke. 
Yet  he  went  on  bravely  with  his  duties  in  the  Court  of  Session, 
his  Demonology  and  Witchcraft^  and  other  literary  labours.     He 
would  not  look  upon  himself  as  fatally  seized  or  threatened. 
In  July  he  wrote  to  Wordsworth — whom  he  addressed  "  Dearest 
Wordsworth  " — "  Don't  you  remember  something  of  a  promises 
broken,  and  propose  to  repair  it  next  year?     I  hope  you  mean' 
to  visit  Abbotsford,  and  bring  with  you  as  many  of  your  family 
as  you  possibly  can.     You  will  find  me  in  my  glory  ;  .  .  .  Mrs. 
Wordsworth  and  Miss  Wordsworth  will,  I  hope,  think  them- 
selves   at    home,    as    well    as    my   early   acquaintance.    Miss 
Dorothea."      Wordsworth   replied    to  "  dear  Sir  Walter,"  and 
rebuked  him    gently  for  writing  "  Mount   Rydal  "    instead   of 
"  Rydal  Mount."     The  visit  came  off  in  September,  1831,  just  a 
year  before  Scott's  death.     Scott  had  been  declining  fast.     He 
had  to  retire  from  the  clerkship  of  the  Court  of  Session  ;   he 
had  another  stroke ;    his   faculties    were   manifestly   impaired. 
More  and  more  he  leant  on  Will  Laidlaw  and  his  ever-ready 


KK'J.M    UNFINISHED    I'OKTKAIT 


SIR   WALTER  SCOTT 

SIR    EDWIN    LANDSEEK    IN    THE    NATIONAL    fOKTKAIT    CJALLEKV 


V     OF  THE 


OF 
iLlfO 


^^ 


i 


WORDSWORTH,   SCOTT,    AND   NORTH  247 

kindness  ;  patiently  he  worked  at  Count  Robert  of  Paris,  Castle 
D anger otcs.d^nd  Tales  of  a  Grandfather.  In  the  summer,  Turner 
the  painter  was  with  him.  It  was  resolved  to  try  the  effect  of  a 
voyage  and  winter  abroad.  Scott  was  to  start  on  September  23, 
and  on  the  21st  Wordsworth  and  Dora  arrived  at  Abbots- 
ford.  Wordsworth  would  have  gone  earlier,  but  had  been 
prevented  from  starting  by  a  bad  attack  of  inflammation  of  the 
^y^s.  However,  Scott's  preparations  were  made,  and  there  was 
a  pleasant  little  party  at  Abbotsford,  with  an  air  of  leisurely 
hospitality.  Though  Lockhart  reports  that  his  wife  had  gone  on 
to  London  the  day  before  the  Wordsworths  came,  Wordsworth 
himself  speaks  of  her  as  at  Abbotsford,  and  as  "  chanting  old 
ballads  to  her  harp."  Major  Scott  was  there,  and  his  sister 
Anne  ;  and  there  were  other  agreeable  and  amusing  people. 
Wordsworth  was  shocked  by  the  change  in  his  old  friend ;  but 
Scott  did  his  best  as  the  poet-host  of  a  poet.  An  expedition 
was  made  to  Newark  Castle — Wordsworth's  second  visit  to  the 
Vale  of  Yarrow.  Sir  Walter  was  able  to  walk  with  something  of 
the  old  vigour.  Wordsworth  commemorated  the  day  in  his 
Yarrow  Revisited — verses  which  have  none  of  the  charm  of  the 
other  poems  inspired  by  the  haunted  stream.  Yet  there  is  fine 
homage  to  Scott  in  the  assurance  of  welcome  by  Italy  to  the 
Minstrel  of  the  Border — 

"  For  Thou,  upon  a  hundred  streams, 

By  tales  of  love  and  sorrow, 
Of  faithful  love,  undaunted  truth, 

Hast  shed  the  power  of  Yarrow  ; 
And  streams,  unknown,  hills  yet  unseen, 

Wherever  they  invite  Thee, 
At  parent  Nature's  grateful  call, 

With  gladness  must  requite  Thee." 

As  they  returned  to  Abbotsford  by  the  ford  of  the  Tweed, 
Wordsworth  saw  a  sad  light,  purple  rather  than  golden,  on  the 
,  Eildon  Hills.     It  seemed  "fraught  with  omen"  ;  and  he  put  all 
I  the  sadness  of  his  heart  into  an  irregular  sonnet — 

"  A  trouble,  not  of  clouds,  or  weeping  rain, 
Nor  of  the  setting  sun's  pathetic  light 
Engendered,  hangs  o'er  Eildon's  triple  height  : 
Spirits  of  Power,  assembled  there,  complain 
For  kindred  Power  departing  from  their  sight ; 


248  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

While  Tweed,  best  pleased  in  chanting  a  blithe  strain, 

Saddens  his  voice  again,  and  yet  again. 

Lift  up  your  hearts,  ye  Mourners  !  for  the  might 

Of  the  whole  world's  good  wishes  with  him  goes  ; 

Blessings  and  prayers,  in  nobler  retinue 

Than  sceptred  king  or  laurelled  conqueror  knows 

Follow  this  wondrous  Potentate.     Be  true, 

Ye  winds  of  ocean  and  the  midland  sea, 

Wafting  your  Charge  to  soft  Parthenope  ! " 

In  Dora's  album,  on  the  morning  before  the  Wordsworths 
left,  Scott  wrote  verses,  too  imperfect  to  be  transcribed  here. 
Speaking  of  them  to  Dora,  Scott  said  :  "  I  should  not  have  done 
anything  of  this  kind  but  'for  your  father's  sake  ;  they  are 
probably  the  last  verses  I  shall  ever  write."  Then  the  poets 
had  a  long  talk,  in  the  course  of  which  Scott  spoke  of  the 
happiness,  on  the  whole,  of  his  life.  To  Wordsworth,  wishing 
him  health  from  his  journey,  Scott,  with  a  sad  smile,  quoted 
from  Yarrow  U^ivisited — 

"  When  I  am  there,  although  'tis  fair, 
'Twill  be  another  Yarrow." 

Then   they   parted  ;    and   next   day  Scott   began  his  journey 
to  Naples. 

In  1837,  Wordsworth  in  Italy  sums  up  his  feeling  about 
Scott,  in  the  long  blank  verse  poem  called  Musings  near  Aqua- 
pendente.  The  sight  of  the  Apennines  characteristically  sent 
his  fancy  wandering  to  his  Lakeland,  to  Fairfield,  and  Seat 
Sandal  and  Helvellyn.  And  then  his  thoughts  fell  on  Scott, 
and  he  remembered  how  Italy,  with  all  her  amplitude  of  beauty, 
had  no  cure  for  his  sick  body  and  mind.  And  he  was  moved  to 
thanksgiving  that  he  was  still  well  enough,  still  free  enough, 
to  enjoy  what  had  done  nothing  for  his  friend — 

"  That  I — so  near  the  term  of  human  life 
Appointed  by  man's  common  heritage. 
Frail  as  the  frailest  one,  withal  (if  that 
Deserve  a  thought)  but  little  known  to  fame — 
Am  free  to  rove  where  Nature's  loveliest  looks, 
Art's  noblest  relics,  history's  rich  bequests, 
Failed  to  reanimate  and  but  feebly  cheered 
The  whole  world's  Darling — free  to  rove  at  will 
O'er  high  and  low,  and  if  requiring  rest, 
Rest  from  enjoyment  only." 


P 


I 


WORDSWORTH,   SCOTT,   AND   NORTH  249 

In  the   Extempore  Effusion  of  1835  Wordsworth    had   re- 
lembered  Scott.     He  thought  of  his  visits  to  Yarrow — 

"  When  last  along  its  banks  I  wandered, 

Through  groves  that  had  begun  to  shed 

Their  golden  leaves  upon  the  pathways, 

My  steps  the  Border-Minstrel  led. 
"  The  mighty  Minstrel  breathes  no  longer, 

'Mid  mouldering  ruins  low  he  lies." 

^  \  But   the  immediate   inspiration   of  the   poem   was   a   less 

-fnous  Scot  than  Sir  Walter — less  famous  and  yet  as  genuine 

--James  Hogg,  the  Ettrick  Shepherd,  the  author  of  Kilmeny 

^'•ad  The  Queen's  Wake;  one  of  the  expounders  of  the  Romanticism 

-c  the  Scottish  border,  whom    British  literature  cannot  quite 

-a'ord  to  forget.     Wordsworth  met  him  during  his  first  Scottish 

'iepedition  in  1803,  not  long  after  Scott  himself  had  come  to 

•kow  him.     Hogg  was  a  sheep-farmer  rather  than  a  shepherd 

f  Dper ;   a  rough,  uncouth  fellow,  with  a  streak  of  most  real 

gnius.     In   Wordsworth's   cold,  uncompromising  phrase,  "  he 

v.s  undoubtedly  a  man  of  original  genius,  but  of  coarse  manners, 

ad  low  and  offensive  opinions."     It  was  in  Hogg's  company 

%it  Wordsworth  first  saw  Yarrow. 


"  When  first,  descending  from  the  moorland, 
I  saw  the  Stream  of  Yarrow  glide 
Along  a  bare  and  open  valley. 
The  Ettrick  Shepherd  was  my  guide." 


Wordsworth  had  not  enough  humour,  flexibility,  breadth  to 
-t'lch  things  and  persons  Scottish  with  more  than  his  finger- 
ttti'S.  But  with  one  of  the  most  vigorous  and  impressive  of  the 
■  Sots  of  genius  in  those  days,  he  was  brought  into  close  relations 
omore  than  one  kind.  John  Wilson,  the  "  Christopher  North  " 
oBlackwood's  Magazine,  is  one  of  those  who  suffer  the  nemesis  of 
to  strong  personality.  A  poet,  a  critic,  an  essayist,  a  humourist, 
aournalist,  a  professor  of  moral  philosophy,  he  was  interesting 
a|d  creditable  in  each  capacity,  and  yet  he  is  hardly  remembered 
iiany.  He  is  remembered  chiefly  by  those  survivors  who  can 
lok  back  on  the  living  man,  with  his  splendid  face  and  figure,  in 
tb  Edinburgh  streets,  his  masses  of  tawny  hair,  and  the  desultory 
rapsodies  in  the  college  class-room,  which  did  duty  as  lectures 
c  moral  philosophy.     Yet  he  was  a  grand  combination  of  brain 


250  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS    CIRCLE 

and  muscle  ;  a  lover  of  the  open  air,  of  sport,  of  pedestrian!:  i, 
"and  yet  a  spirit  still,  and  bright"  with  the  love  of  all  hum^a 
and  generous  and  inspiring  things  that  are  born  of  men's  min  , 
The  son  of  a  Paisley  manufacturer,  John  Wilson  was  born  i 
1785,  the  year  also  of  De  Quincey's  birth.  Unlike  most  Scs 
of  his  rank  in  those  days,  Wilson  went  from  Glasgow  Colb* 
to  the  University  of  Oxford,  becoming  a  Commoner  of  Magdal  1, 
in  1803.  Before  he  left  Glasgow  there  happened  to  him  wit 
happened  to  De  Ouincey  almost  simultaneously — he  felt  ^ 
impact  of  the  early  genius  of  Wordsworth.  He  read  Lyril 
Ballads ;  and  so  moved  by  them  was  he  that  in  May,  1802  i 
his  seventeenth  year,  he  wrote  a  long  letter  about  them  to  Wor.. 
worth — a  letter  expressing  the  kind  of  passionate  interest  c\ 
admiration  which  De  Quincey  felt;  a  letter  such  as  it  doe;i 
youth  good  to  write,  and  such  as  the  greatest  man  may  IJ 
proud  to  get  from  the  humblest  of  his  disciples.  "To  rece; 
a  letter  from  you,"  Wilson  wrote,  "would  afford  me  m-; 
happiness  than  any  occurrence  in  this  world,  save  the  happin  5 
of  my  friends."  He  felt  that  humanity  in  Wordsworth  spc; 
straight  to  the  humanity  in  himself  "You  have  seized  ufi 
those  feelings  that  most  deeply  interest  the  heart."  He  reali:! 
the  novelty,  the  orginality,  of  Wordsworth's  treatment  of  Nati . 
The  "  disposition  of  the  mind  to  assimilate  the  appearances  f 
external  nature  to  its  own  situation  .  .  .  you  have  emplo)] 
with  a  most  electrifying  effect."  With  the  ethical  assurance  f 
a  well-disposed  youth,  Wilson  dwelt  on  the  "  morality  "  of  the  n ' 
poetry  ;  and  informed  Wordsworth  that  Lyrical  Ballads  was  1; 
book  which  he  valued  next  to  his  Bible.  Nor  was  the  t* 
afraid  of  blaming,  any  more  than  of  praising,  his  hero  to  : 
face.  He  considered  that  Wordsworth  had  fallen  into  an  err , 
the  effects  of  which  were,  however,  "  exceedingly  trivial." 
his  desire  to  be  truthful  he  had  at  times  forgotten  the  paramoi 
obligation  on  poetry  to  give  "  pleasure,"  i.e.  to  be  alwc 
beautiful,  or,  at  least,  interesting.  In  The  Idiot  Boy,  for  examj 
Wilson  thought  that  Wordsworth  had  failed  to  make  Bett- 
maternal  feeling  interesting  as  such ;  and  that,  he  consider«, 
was  the  reason  why  he  "  never  met  one  who  did  not  rise  rati' 
displeased  from  the  perusal  "  of  the  poem. 

Wordsworth's  reply  was  lengthy,  and  must  have  intoxicat 
Wilson.     He  discussed  the  influence  of  scenery  on  charact , 


WORDSWORTH,   SCOTT,   AND   NORTH  251 

id  defended  himself  as  to  the  unfortunate  Idiot  Boy,  in  words 

vich   are   an   instalment  of  his   theory  of  poetry.     Granting 

"Olson's   contention    that   poetry  must  please,  he   asks:  must 

oiase  whom  ?     And  he  answers :  not  this  taste  or  that  taste, 

iV;  essential  human  nature.     And  then  he  asks  :    ''Where  are 

■^  to  find  the  best  measure  of  this  t     I  answer,  from  within  ; 

y  stripping   our   own    hearts   naked,  and  by  looking  out    of 

rselves  to  those  men  who  lead  the  simplest  lives,  and  most 

1  ;ording    to    Nature ;    men   who    have    never    known    false 

•(inements,   wayward    and    artificial    desires,    false   criticisms, 

B^minate   habits    of  thinking   and   feeling  ;   or   who,    having 

own  these  things,  have  outgrown   them."     "  People  in   our 

•;ik   in  life,"  Wordsworth   proceeds,  "are    perpetually  falling 

iio  one  sad  mistake,  namely,  that  of  supposing  that  Human 

''Ij.ture  and  the  persons  they  associate  with  are   one  and  the 

•Wne  thing."     The  fallacy  imparts  itself  to   literature ;  and  a 

kid  of  conventionally  polite  standard   is  set  up,  below  which 

pi^tic  themes  must  not  fall.     This  standard  it  was  the  mission 

■o^  Lyrical  Ballads  to  overthrow  with  the  battle-cry  of  nothing 

■  ■zkmon  I    Idiot  is  an  ugly  word  ;  but  the  kind  of  human  being 

'-dliignated  by  the  word  is  one  of  God's  creatures,  and  he  and  the 

iibistries  of  service  which  surround  him  are  for  poetry  as  much 

aany  other  displays  of  human  nature  and  human  affection.    "  I 

MiQ.  often  applied  to  idiots,"  Wordsworth  wrote,  "  in  my  own 

'n*nd,that  sublime  expression  of  Scripture,  that  their  life  is  hidden 

■ikth  God.  ...  I  have  often  looked  upon  the  conduct  of  fathers 

%!d  mothers  of  the  lower  classes  of  society  toward  idiots  as  a 

•g^^at  triumph  of  the  human  heart.     It  is  there  that  we  see  the 

sength,  disinterestedness,  and  grandeur  of  love  ;    nor  have  I 

■efer  been  able  to  contemplate  an  object  that  calls  out  so  many 

excellent  and  virtuous  sentiments  without  finding  it  hallowed 

threby,  and  having  something  in  me  which  bears  down  before 

itlike  a  deluge,  every  feeble  sensation  of  disgust  and  aversion." 

Vordsworth  concluded  his  argument  with  a  significant  state- 

ri:nt.     "  It  is  not  enough  for  me  as  a  Poet,  to  delineate  merely 

;s:h  feelings  as  all  men  do  sympathize  with;    but  it  is  also 

hjhly  desirable  to  add  to  these  others,  such  as  all  men  may 

supathize  with,  and  such  as  there  is  reason  to  believe  they 

viuld  be  better  and  more  moral  beings  if  they  did  sympathize." 

We  know  not  how  Wilson  replied  to   this  letter:  perhaps 


252  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

he  only  hugged  it  to  his  heart.  He  might  have  replied  It 
Wordsworth  had  hardly  met  his  chief  difficulty,  namely,  laf 
the  affection  of  Betty  Foy  was  not,  in  tJie  poef s  presentation  . 
interesting  enough  for  poetry.  It  may  be  allowed  to  he 
spectator  of  this  argumentative  encounter  to  remark  jiat 
neither  of  the  disputants  quite  understood  the  real  clairiof 
The  Idiot  Boy  to  poetic  rank — its  possession  of  humour.  \'.th 
its  delicate  union  of  humour  and  tenderness,  and  its  deliglful 
background  of  moonlit  landscape,  it  was  and  is  a  true  pdm, 
worth  pages  of  the  sentimental  melody  which  Wilson  was  aibr- 
wards  to  pour  forth.  Neither  Wordsworth  nor  Wilson  old 
understand  this ;  and  so  their  doughty  strokes  did  little  nlre 
than  beat  the  air.  I 

In  1807,  when  he  was  twenty-two,  and  had  just  finishel  a 
brilliant  Oxford  career,  Wilson  straightway  made  himsel  a 
Laker,  by  taking  a  cottage  on  the  woody  slopes  that  boid 
Windermere  on  the  east.  Henceforth  he  was  "  Mr.  Wilsoi  of 
EUeray,"  enjoying,  like  De  Quincey,  the  proximity  of  the  pits 
of  Grasmere  and  Keswick,  and  bent  on  spending  ample  meis 
in  a  life  of  poetry  and  sport  and  congenial  fellowship.  He  et 
about  building  a  larger  house,  and  making  acquaintance  injl 
directions.  He  now  got  to  know  Wordsworth  for  the  Jst 
time.  In  the  winter  of  1808-9,  ^^e  winter  of  The  Friend  'id 
the  Convention  of  Cintra  pamphlet,  the  smoky  winter  at  Ai,n 
Bank,  Wilson  first  saw  De  Quincey,  his  contemporary  it 
Oxford,  his  one  companion  in  true  Wordsworthian  insi<t 
De  Quincey  and  Coleridge  were  both  at  Allan  Bank.  "  (iie 
room  on  the  ground-floor  " — so  De  Quincey  wrote — "  desig  |d 
for  a  breakfasting-room  .  .  .  was  then  occupied  by  Mr.  Ci 
ridge  as  a  study.  On  this  particular  day,  the  sun  having  0 
just  set,  it  naturally  happened  that  Mr.  Coleridge — wh:e 
nightly  vigils  were  long — had  not  yet  come  down  to  breakfai ; 
meantime,  and  until  the  epoch  of  the  Coleridgian  breakJit 
should  arrive,  his  study  was  lawfully  disposable  to  profajr 
uses.  Here,  therefore,  it  was,  that,  opening  the  door  hastilyli 
quest  of  a  book,  I  found  seated,  and  in  earnest  conversatii, 
two  gentlemen ;  one  of  them  my  host,  Mr.  Wordsworth,  t 
that  time  about  thirty-seven  or  thirty-eight  years  old;  '; 
other  was  a  younger  man  by  good  sixteen  or  seventeen  yec^, 
in  a  sailor's  dress,  manifestly  in  robust  health,  fervidus  juveV'^ 


PROFESSOR  JOHN   WILSON 

(■' CHRISTOl'HEK    NOKTH  ") 


4 
I 


■ 


WORDSWORTH,   SCOTT,   AND   NORTH  253 

1  wearing  upon  his  countenance  a  powerful   expression  of 
•,)ur    and    animated    intelligence,    mixed   with    much   good 
ure.     'Mr.  Wilson  of  Elleray^ — delivered  as  the  formula  of 
loduction,  in  the  deep  tones  of  Mr.  Wordsworth — at  once 
lished  the  momentary  surprise  I  felt  on  finding  an  unknown 
tnger  where  I  had  expected  nobody,  and  substituted  a  sur- 
•e  of  another  kind.     I  now  well  understood  who  it  was  that 
iw."     And  De   Quincey  goes  on   describing   the   brilliant 
Dng  man  in  his  careful  copious  way.     "  A  tall  man  about  six 
{  high  .  .  .  built  with  tolerable  appearance  of  strength  .  .  . 
J  wearing,  for  the  predominant  character  of  his  person,  light- 
i\  and  agility  ; — he  seemed  framed  with  an  express  view  to 
/mastical  exercises  of  every  sort."     De  Quincey  could  not 
li  him  handsome.     His  complexion  was  too  florid  ;  hair  of  a 
\  quite  unsuited  to  that  complexion  ;  eyes  not  good,  "  having 
:apparent  depth,  but  seeming  mere  surfaces "  ;  nothing  fine, 
.hort,  except  a  Ciceronian  mouth  and  chin.     Wilson's  manner 
1  talk  were  more  arresting  than  his  appearance ;  the  things 
Ich    chiefly   struck   De    Quincey   were   "the    humility   and 
r/ity  with  which  he  spoke  of  himself;  his  large  expansion  of 
3rt,  and  a  certain  air  of  noble  frankness  which  overspread 
/ything  he  said  ;  he  seemed  to  have  an  intense  enjoyment  of 
f;  indeed,  being  young,  rich,  healthy,  and  full  of  intellectual 
qvity,  it  could  not  be  very  wonderful  that  he   should  feel 
apy  and  pleased  with  himself  and  others  ;  but  it  was  some- 
lit  unusual  to  find  that  so  rare  an  assemblage  of  endowments 
a  communicated  no  tinge  of  arrogance  to  his  manner,  or  at 
["disturbed  the  general  temperance  of  his  mind." 
The  presence  of  such  a  man  in  those   solitudes,  and   the 
iiptuous,  sociable  life  which  he  lived  in  the  neighbourhood, 
i   something   to   enrich    Wordsworth's    experience.     Words- 
(th  and  Wilson  made  a  more  satisfactory  pair  of  friends  than 
Wrdsworth  and  De  Quincey.     Like  De  Quincey,  Wilson  loved 
D-amble  about  by  night ;  but  his  days  were  filled  with  more 
eial    companionships   than   the   solitude-loving   opium-eater 
old  or  would  command.     Wilson  made  poetry  in  his  nocturnal 
^Jks ;  he  cultivated  Wordsworthian  moods  and  even  Words- 
^(thian  expressions,  here   and  there  in   a  much   more    fuU- 
1  )ded  style  than  Wordsworth's — 


254  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

"  Beneath  the  full-orb'd  moon,  that  bathed  in  hght 
The  mellow'd  verdure  of  Helvellyn's  steep, 
My  spirit  teeming  with  creations  bright, 
I  walked  like  one  who  wanders  in  his  sleep  ! 


Through  the  hush'd  air  awoke  mysterious  awe  ; 

God  cheer'd  my  loneliness  with  holy  mirth; 
A7id  in  this  blended  7nood  I  clearly  saw 

The  moving  spirit  that  pervades  the  earths 

Wilson  gave  Wordsworth  a  very  complete  sympathy.  '.  | 
fragment  of  prose-poetry,  he  commemorates,  tenderly  nj 
lovingly,  the  parting  of  Wordsworth  and  his  sailor-bro  er, 
which  had  made  a  great  impression  on  his  mind.  *'  I 
sweet  summer  day  went  along  with  him  and  heard  the  m(.iii 
choly  tale.  Then,  whoever  gave  to  that  sublime  solitude  ria 
with  holy  feelings,  and  with  the  wildness  of  nature  join  huai 
sympathies." 

The  first  phase  of  Wilson's  Windermere  life,  with  its  er'itt 
siasms  of  action  and  feeling,  did  not  last  very  long.  Wjdi 
found  a  wife  at  Ambleside,  and  condensed  his  poetic  effor  ii 
one  long,  fluent,  picturesque  poem,  The  Isle  of  Palms.  !t! 
fluency  and  picturesqueness,  rather  than  inwardness  and  inji- 
nation,  justified  Scott  in  speaking  of  it  as  "something  in  he 
style  of  Southey."  Scott  welcomed  Wilson  as  an  author,  id 
characterized  him  well  as  an  "excellent,  warm-hearted,  ii 
enthusiastic  young  man  ;  something  too  much,  perhaps,  of  hi 
latter  quantity,  places  him  amongst  the  list  of  originals."  \ 
Isle  of  Palms  appeared  in  1812,  and  was  well  received.  Anc  lei 
volume,  containing  a  drama,  The  City  of  the  Plague,  and  c  .a 
poems,  came  out  in  18 16;  but  before  its  publication,  the  i)S 
perity  of  the  EUeray  life  was  wrecked,  and  Wilson  enteretDi 
a  new  phase  of  activity.  His  independent  income  was  ;t 
he  had  to  work  for  his  bread  ;  and  he  went  to  Edinburg  to 
prepare  for  the  Scottish  Bar,  and  to  enter,  in  a  year  or  tw(  3n 
his  famous  connection  with  Blackwood^  and  his  best-known  ^  rk 
as  a  writer  of  prose.  He  did  not  give  up  Elleray,  th(^h 
henceforward  it  was  a  haunt  of  his  leisure,  rather  than  a 
manent  home. 

18 17  was  an  important  year  in  British  literary  annals.    ^ 
critical  renascence  and  the  exciting  conditions  of  public  a 
had  given  birth  to  the  Edinburgh  and   Quarterly  Revieii "» 


,  WORDSWORTH,   SCOTT,   AND   NORTH  255 

rich  the  former  was  Whig  and  the  latter  chiefly  Tory.     Litera- 
U3,  as  such,  has   nothing  to  do  with   party-politics ;    but  in 
bse  days   partisanship   was   allowed   to  take   possession    of 
itrature  and  falsify  its  criticism.      Nowhere  was  partisanship 
:(ner,  nowhere  was  intelligence  more  vigorous,  than  in  Edin- 
ugh.     The  city  teemed  with  able  young  men ;  and  William 
5.ckwood  the  bookseller  was  as  able  and  astute  as  any  of 
tm.     The  Whig  Edinburgh,  with  Jeffrey  as  its  oracle,  had  an 
treasonable    and     undesirable     monopoly :      John     Murray's 
larterly  was  a  London  affaw*.     There  was  room,  nay,  there 
^\  a  crying  need,  for  a  monthly  Edinburgh  magazine,  of  Tory 
mciples  and  with  a  mellower  tone  than  Jeffrey  and  his  co- 
uutors  could  command.     In   October,    1817,  after  one  false 
trt   under   another   name,  Blackwood' s  Edmbiirgh  Magazine 
)<;an  to  appear ;  and  Wilson  found  in  it  his  chief  outlet  hence- 
cward.     Yet  it  was  some  time  before  he  could  accommodate 
liiself  to  it,  or,  indeed,  before  it  learned  its  own  proper  role  in 
:1  world  of  letters.     In  its  first  inception,  Blackwood  was  very 
•eublican  in  constitution,  Blackwood  himself  being  its  sole 
i(tor ;  and  it  was  written  in  too  partisan,  personal,  and  satirical 
•i;iew  to  be  suited  either  to  Wilson's  gracious  and  generous 
.:;qper,  or  to  the  healing  and  edifying  work  it  was  destined  to 
'  i;  in  the  'twenties  and  'thirties.     The  Blackwood  which  tried 
xscorch  Coleridge  and  put  an  extinguisher  on  Keats  was  not 
.4=  Blackwood  oi  "Christopher  North."     Blackwood  was  going 
tcbe  something  very  different  from  the  mere  organ  of  Scottish 
.Iryism,   something   much   better  than   an   opponent   of   the 
Einbtirgk,  a  rival  of  the  Quarterly.     Its  real  mission,  not   in 
SDtland  only,  but  in  Britain,  was  to  be  the  medium  of  that 
h;her  lighter  literature — the  literature  of  fiction,  of  sympathetic 
cticism,  of  humour,  of  feeling  for  landscape  and  pastoral  life — 
\A.ich  was  born  afresh  at  the  opening  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
The  Blackwood  which  was  all  this  was  the  Blackwood  which 
gve  itself  up  to  "  Christopher  North."    He,  laying  poetry  aside, 
bcame  its  brain,  its  life,  its  soul.     In  1820  Wilson  was  made 
lofessor  of  Moral  Philosophy  in  the  University  of  Edinburgh, 
ad  Professor  he  remained  for  more  than  thirty  years.     But  he 
fand  time  simultaneously  to  pour  himself  out  in  Blackwood,  to 
b  its  best  critic,  its  most  unflagging  humourist,  its  most  delight- 
f  essayist.     Of  Wilson's  humour  the  dialogues — not  all  written 


256  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

by  Christopher — called  Nodes  AmbrosiaiiCB  are  the  most  si 
stantial  monument.  If  the  Nodes  repel  by  an  occasioi ' 
coarseness,  or  by  a  too  continuous  gush  of  the  rhetor! 
sentimentalism  which  was  Wilson's  bane,  they  are  an  invalual 
record  of  an  interesting  phase  of  Scottish  character  and  lettei 
they  show  us,  better  than  anything  else,  not  only  the  better  a 
more  intellectual  side  of  Scottish  convivialism  in  the  reign 
George  IV.,  but  that  Scoto-English  literary  rapprocheme 
which  was  shown  also  by  the  popularity  of  Scott  on  both  sic 
of  the  Border ;  by  De  Quincey's  complete  domestication 
Edinburgh ;  by  the  Oxford  associations  of  John  Gibson  Lo( 
hart ;  and,  last  but  not  least,  by  Wilson's  own  double  personal! 
as  at  once  a  Laker  and  a  Scot  of  Scots.  No  literary  shortcomin 
can  ever  rob  the  Nodes  of  this  high  value. 

And  then  the  Recreations  of  Christopher  North  !  Christopt  ^ 
at  the  Lakes,  Christopher  at  Colonsay,  A  nglimaiiia  ;  what  delig] 
ful  desultoriness  ;  what  lyrical  egoism  ;  what  wholesome  Natui 
worship,  wholesome  sociability !  For  the  periodical  essay  ' 
this  kind,  John  Wilson,  on  his  much  lower  plane,  really  c' 
nearly  as  much  as  Charles  Lamb. 

How  Christopher  North  handled  Wordsworth  in  Blackwc 
— and  he  had  much  to  do  with  him — we  shall  see  in  the  h 
chapter.  Personal  intercourse  there  was  not  much  between  t 
two  men  after  the  change  in  Wilson's  fortunes  in  1815.  Wilsoi 
visits  to  EUeray  were  infrequent  and  brief,  and  generally 
summer,  when  the  Professor  was  the  centre  of  a  gay  party,  n 
quite  suited  to  Wordsworth's  idiosyncrasy. 

In  the  summer  of  1825  there  were  specially  great  doin( 
Sir  Walter  Scott,  with  his  daughter  Anne  and  Lockhart,  w' 
in  Ireland  that  summer ;  and,  on  their  way  back,  they  passi 
northward  by  Wales  and  the  Lakes.  Of  course  they  foui' 
their  way  to  EUeray,  and  stayed  three  days  with  the  Wilsor' 
Nor  was  this  all.  At  Storrs,  further  down  the  lake,  lived 
certain  Colonel  Bolton,  with  whom  George  Canning  was  stayin 
Canning  and  Scott  were  great  friends  ;  and  Wordsworth  ar/ 
Southey  greatly  admired  the  Tory  statesman,  with  his  love 
national  independence  abroad,  and  his  unflinching  resistance  1^ 
Parliamentary  reform  at  home.  Therefore  there  were  gre; 
comings  and  goings  between  Storrs,  EUeray,  Rydal,  and  Grei 
Hall ;   and  the  eastern  shore  of  Windermere  was  brilliant 


f: 


WORDSWORTH,  SCOTT,   AND   NORTH  257 

iagust,  1825.  Canning  was  greatly  appreciative  of  Wilson, 
viom  he  called  "  Lord  High  Admiral  of  the  Lakes."  Wilson's 
f  ^ourite  form  of  social  celebration  was  the  organizing  a  regatta 
c  the  lake  ;  and  he  outdid  himself  on  this  occasion.  The  house- 
prties  at  Storrs  and  Elleray  met  day  after  day;  Wordsworth 
ad  Southey  were  as  merry  as  everybody  else  ;  there  were 
ring-parties  in  the  woods  in  the  mornings;  boatings  on  the 
rjonlit  lake  in  the  evenings ;  and  then  the  climax — the  un- 
pralleled  regatta.  "  Perhaps,"  Lockhart  narrated,  "  there  were 
nt  fewer  than  fifty  barges  following  in  the  Professor's  radiant 
p^cession  when  it  paused  at  the  Point  of  Storrs  to  admit  into 
ti  place  of  honour  the  vessel  that  carried  kind  and  happy 
I:.  Bolton  and  his  guest.  The  three  Bards  of  the  Lakes  led 
t^  cheers  that  hailed  Scott  and  Canning  ;  and  the  music  and 
sishine,  flags,  streamers,  and  gay  dresses,  the  merry  hum  of 
vices,  and  the  rapid  splashing  of  innumerable  oars,  made  up  a 
dzzling  mixture  of  sensations,  as  the  flotilla  wound  its  way 
aiong  richly-foliaged  islands,  and  along  bays  and  promontories 
popled  with  enthusiastic  spectators." 

But,  though  Elleray  and  Wordsworth  occasionally  saw 
\ilson,  he  was  now  and  henceforward  essentially  the  Edin- 
^rgh  man,  the  mainstay  of  Blackwood,  the  beloved  paterfamilias 
id  Professor.  Between  them,  his  daughter  and  his  pupils  have 
l(t  a  delightful  picture  of  the  splendid  giant  when  his  yellow 
bir  was  growing  grey;  of  his  loving  heart,  his  overflowing 
esrgy,  his  bewildered  and  bewildering  absence  of  mind.  We 
Si  him  in  his  class-room  with  his  copious  rhetorical  lectures 
vitten  on  backs  of  old  letters  or  any  other  handy  scraps  of 
j>per ;  his  blue  eyes  flashing  with  elevated  feeling ;  or  his 
pwerful  frame  shaken  with  emotion  under  some  spasm  of 
pthetic  reminiscence  or  tragic  contrast.  We  see  him  in  his 
hme,  tender  with  his  wife,  playful  with  his  children  and  grand- 
cldren  ;  the  friend  of  every  gentle  and  oppressed  dumb 
Ciature.  He  outlived  Wordsworth  four  years  ;  working  on 
nmfully  until  the  arresting  touch  of  paralysis  was  laid  upon 
hn.  When  he  passed  away,  in  the  spring  of  1854,  a  large  and 
liht-bearing  spirit  was  lost  to  the  world. 


CHAPTER  XII 
FELLOW-WORKERS     IN    ROMANTICISM 

THE  question  as  to  Wordsworth's  affinities  with  contempi 
rary  poets  who  have  become  immortal,  is  not  to 
solved  by  collecting  his  opinions  of  them,  or  theirs  of  hir 
Wordsworth's  own  criticism  was  never  enthusiastic,  and  ofte 
when  he  was  dealing  with  individuals,  it  was  ill-informed,  preji 
diced,  and  conventional.  Moreover,  great  as  was  his  achiev(:, 
ment  in  poetic  reform,  splendidly  as  he  showed  how  imaginatici 
at  its  highest  deals  with  poetic  material,  he  was  often  impe. 
fectly  aware  of  the  whereabouts  of  his  own  successes ;  and  h 
theory  of  imagination,  which  he  was  eager  to  put  in  logical  forn 
is,  when  one  tries  to  grasp  it,  a  mere  vanishing  cloud.  Thei 
was  a  strong  tendency,  even  among  those  who  were  hard) 
"  Lakists,"  to  accept  the  Lakist  theory  and  to  cut  Wordsworth 
or  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge,  off  from  the  poetic  movement  ( 
their  age.  (Compare  C.  Lamb's  attitude  to  Byron,  and  the  a 
but  ignoring  of  Shelley  and  Keats.) 

The  other  side  of  the  account,  no  doubt,  is  more  satisfactor; 
What  Wordsworth  said  or  wrote  of  the  poetry  of  Coleridge,  c; 
Scott,  or  Keats,  or  Shelley,  or  Byron,  might  be  blotted  out  wit! 
hardly  a  grain  of  appreciable  loss.  On  the  other  hand,  if  wi 
forget  Byron's  vulgar  scorn,  there  is  sufficient  evidence  that  thj 
poets  we  have  named,  although  not  Wordsworth's  partisan., 
gave  him  the  kind  of  consideration  and  veneration,  the  kind  c. 
admiring  homage  which  the  world  now  gives  him  withoii 
dissent.  Yet,  even  so,  their  criticism  was  contemporary  ;  and  it, 
historical  interest  is  not  equalled  by  its  absolute  value.  Thei 
consciousness,  however,  that  Wordsworth,  with  whatever  dil 
ferences,  was  in  poetry  a  fellow-worker,  makes  a  better  starting 
point  than  Wordsworth's  own  self-consciousness,  or  the  parti 
sanship   which   flattered    it.      We   can    see   what    Wordsworth 

258  1 


FELLOW-WORKERS   IN   ROMANTICISM  259 

Inself  failed  to  see,  that  the  other  great  poets  of  the  Romantic 
Ijvival  were  in  Wordsworth's  circle  :  we  only  want  to  assure 
crselves  as  to  their  claims  and  qualifications  to  stand  there. 

The  Romantic  Revival    as  a  whole   may  be  treated  from 
nmy  points  of  view.     Perhaps  one  of  the  most  practically  use- 
fi    approaches  to   it   is    made  by  considering  its  relation  to 
lizabethanism  on  the  one  hand,  and  to  the  dominant  genius  of 
tJi    eighteenth    century   on   the   other.     For,    if  we   exclude 
Caucer,  as  being  outside  our  immediate  question,  and  if  we 
rr.ke  the  Elizabethan  age  and  the  eighteenth  century  large 
3  )ugh  to  include  all  the  epoch-making  English  poetry  between 
:1:    SJiephea7'dd s    Calendar    and    Lyrical   Ballads,    we    shall 
Dipare  ourselves  to  realize  what  was  done,  and  done  in  concert, 
;c  English  poetry  between  1798  and  1825.       The  change  from 
were  poetry  stood  under  Dryden  and  Pope  to  where  it  stood 
itier,  say,  Wordsworth   and    Shelley,  is   so  startling   that    it 
:anot  be  ignored,  and  cannot  easily  be  misunderstood.     Had 
Cyden   been   what    Chaucer  has  been  called,  the  "  father  of 
Eglish  poetry,"  one  might  say  with  some  plausibility  that  such 
p^try  as  he  founded  was  hardly  poetry  at  all,  and  that  it  was 
e:  for  the  poets  of  the  Romantic  Revival  to  distinguish  the 
:r3  from   the  nominal,  the  real  from  the  official.     With  the 
p<:try  of  Dryden  and  Pope,  even  with  the  poetry  of  Gray,  the 
Dctry  of  the  first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century  has  the 
jliderest   affinities.       Milton    stands   in   a   class   by   himself, 
r aching  Dryden  on  the  one  hand,  and  easily  reaching  back 
m  the   Elizabethan   age   on   the   other,  he  has  but  slender 
•e.tionship  to  either.     Essentially,  what  the  Elizabethans  did 
b  English  poetry  was  to  make  it  human,  and  to  make  it  the 
vcicle  of  beauty.     And  they  did  it  by  inventing  and  perfecting 
::hi  drama  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  lyrical  strain  on  the  other. 
5]!inser's  great  allegory  is,  like  Paradise  Lost,  to  some  extent 
5ctary  :  it  is  a  poem  of  many  aspects,  partly  didactic,  partly 
Pitestant,  partly  courtly,  partly  conventional-chivalric.     It  is 
tb  constant  beauty  and  unfailingly  sweet  phraseology  of  the 
Fcrie    Queene    which   secure   its   immortality.      Much    more 
tyical  is  the  Epithalamitim,  with  its  whole-hearted  exposition 
ofove,  its  gorgeous  imagery,  its  incomparable  lyrical  rapture. 
Hre,  and  in  Shakespeare,  we  have  the  best  that  Elizabeth's 
a§  could  do  for  poetry. 


260  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

It  was  much  indeed ;  and  yet  it  left  much  to  be  done,  mu 
towards  which  the  eighteenth   century   accomplished    nothir, 
Poetry  was  not  yet  "  meditative";  it  was  not  yet  introspectiv; 
it  was  hardly  yet  ideal  or  universal.     The  glory  of  Elizabeths 
ism  was  its  actuality,  its  satisfaction  with  its  own  surroundin ' 
its   own   successful,   strong-pulsed    life.     England,  the    Que, 
Protestantism,  El  Dorado — these   were   universals   and   ide . 
enough  ;  and  if  at  any  point  they  failed,  there  was  the  past  > 
supplement  them,  the  past  of  Greece,  the  past  of  Rome.      W:. 
such  a  world  to  be  realized,  to  be  held,  by  such  intelligen, 
there  was  no  room  for  philosophy,  no  temptation  to  sentimc 
talism  :    here  was   no  place  for  bitter  indignation  ;    for  ea^ 
longing,  for  scornful  satire ;  no  call  to  be  over-stimulated 
cosmopolitan  ideals,  or  to  reconstruct  ultimate  conceptions 
God  and  man.     Action  and  passion,  the  glory  of  the  establish 
order,  so  new  and  yet  so  strong ;  the  romance  of  discove: 
added  to  the  immortal  romance  of  love ;  were  these  things  r 
the  stuff  of  centuries  of  poetry  ? 

But  things  move  quickly  ;  and  the  Elizabethan  freshm 
died  away.  Puritanism  came,  suggesting  a  new  synthesis 
things ;  poetry,  in  spite  of  Milton,  was  forced  into  oppositio 
it  became  the  minister  of  intelligence  rather  than  of  feeling, 
criticism  rather  than  of  enjoyment ;  it  lost  its  hold  on  beau 
Too  much  was  sacrificed  to  form  ;  too  little  play  was  allowed 
individuality.  Then,  at  last,  individuality  turned  scornfu! 
round  on  tradition.  The  world  seemed  cumbered  with  outwo 
tyrannies  ;  and,  except  where  there  was  revolution,  the  imagir 
tion  took  refuge  in  ideals,  ideals  of  the  past,  ideals  of  the  futu 
The  sense  of  the  beautiful  reawoke,  and  insisted  on  expressi 
itself  anew.  Nature,  which  the  Elizabethan  had  cared  for  afl 
his  fashion  as  a  haunt  of  fairies  or  a  background  for  human  li 
came  to  be  loved  for  its  own  sake  and  for  its  infinite  spiriti 
significance,  as  well  as  its  infinite  beauty  and  charm.  Forei{ 
landscape  began  to  make  appeal  to  the  most  insular  of  Engli 
patriots.  Individual  feeling,  even  the  "  pageant  of  bleedii 
hearts,"  was  precious  now  as  poetry.  The  relations  of  God  ai 
the  world  called  out  for  poetic  restatement. 

In  all  these  things  we  recognize  the  work  of  the  Romani 
Revival  as  a  whole.      How  is  the  responsibility  for  it  to 
distributed  1 


FELLOW-WORKERS  IN  ROMANTICISM         261 

Take  the  two  most  apparently  antithetic  of  all  the  great 
pets  of  the  age — Wordsworth  and  Byron.  Nothing  would  have 
srprised  and  shocked  Wordsworth  more  than  to  have  been 
r^arded  as  in  any  sense  a  co-operator  with  Byron.  "  Power/' 
pwer  prostituted  for  the  most  part  to  the  basest  uses,  was  all 
tat  that  pure  and  stern  mind  would  have  allowed  to  the  poet  of 
(tilde  Harold  and  Don  Jtcan.  And  we  know  that  Byron,  in 
Is  estimate  of  Wordsworth,  never  got  much  beyond  contempt 
;  perinduced  upon  conventionalism.  Yet  how  does  the  matter 
£ind  ?  Byron  had  Popian  sympathies  and  did  Popian  work ; 
3 1  Byron  was  as  much  an  innovator  on  the  poetic  tradition  as 
'^'ordsworth.  His  satire  may  be  his  best  work  ;  but  Childe 
.arold  lives  and  will  live ;  the  charm  of  the  oriental  tales  will 
r  ver  wholly  disappear ;  and  Byron,  after  his  fashion,  was  a 
Irist,  and  not  a  wholly  insincere  one.  His  ways,  indeed,  lay 
Ir  apart  from  Wordsworth's  ;  yet,  in  one  respect  at  least,  he 
(d  Wordsworth's  work.  If  Mrs.  Radcliffe  can  be  credited,  as 
:suredly  she  can,  with  having  rediscovered  the  beauty  of 
iature,  so  still  more  can  Byron.  If  Wordsworth  sang  the 
jaise  of  mountains  and  lakes  in  England,  so,  and  with  an  equal 
(thusiasm,  did  Byron  of  mountains  and  lakes  in  Switzerland 
i,id  Greece.  Byron's  sunset  at  Venice  is  as  carefully  observed, 
cid  treated  with  as  much  sense  of  the  beautiful,  as  Wordsworth's 
\  een  linnet  or  daisy.  Moreover,  no  English  poet  before  Byron 
puld  or  could  have  written  such  a  passage.  It  is  as  much  a 
*'omantic  revival"  as  The  Ancient  Mariner ;  nay,  it  is  not  a 
i{vival,  it  is  an  origination. 

I  Because  Byron  was  a  sentimentalist,  a  rhetorician,  an  egotist 
ijis  the  shallowest  criticism  to  deny  him  true  and  wonderful 
Ipetic  inspiration.  And  though  he  was  much  of  a  poseur,  a  good 
(i^al  of  his  poetry  represented  as  genuine  a  return  to  Nature  as 
Yordsworth's.  His  appropriation  of  European  landscape  for 
petry,  his  invention  of  a  poetry  of  travel,  was  an  achievement 
(osely  akin  to  Wordsworth's  invention  of  a  new  pastoralism. 
oth  achievements  were  wholly  free  from  imitativeness  ;  in  both 
I.ere  was  a  return  to  'Ca^  facts  of  Nature  from  the  ideal  landscape 
i  Spenser  and  Milton ;  both  record  impressions  absolutely  at 
I'st  hand.  Wordsworth  maintained  that  Byron,  when  his  poetry 
'as  nearest  being  good,  plagiarized  from  him  ;  and  it  is  much 
e  fashion  to  find  Words worthian  influence  in  the  third  and 


262  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

fourth  cantos  of  Childe  Harold.  We  may  decline  to  take  up  t 
question  of  the  plagiarism.  As  for  influence,  it  is  evident  th 
the  purest  originality  has  parentage  and  ancestry  ;  and  th 
influence  does  not  necessarily  turn  first-hand  into  second-hai 
work. 

Another  point  of  kinship  between  the  two  dissimilar  poets 
their  common  passion  for  liberty.     Here  there  is  essential  uni 
with   superficial   diversity.      Byron    was    nearly    a    generati( 
younger  than  Wordsworth  ;  and  while  the  elderly  senior  po 
was  reposing  in  the  Conservative  atmosphere  of  Lord  Liverpoo 
regime,   the   young   Byron   was   plunging   and   kicking   in  tl 
somewhat  aimless  energies  of  the  new  Radicalism.     But  the.i 
things  do  not  count.     In  the  politics  of  their  poetry  both  m( 
were   pledged — so   to   put  it — to  tyrannicide,  to   the  cause  ' 
nations  against  their  oppressors.     As  Wordsworth's  heart  leapc 
for   Switzerland   and   Venice   and    Spain,   so   did   Byron's   fc 
Greece.    And,  long  before  the  age  at  which  Wordsworth  becatii 
a  timid  Conservative,  Byron,  in  a  fantasy  of  self-devotion,  ha. 
given  his  life  for  the  kind  of  liberty  which  Wordsworth  had  ma 
at  heart. 

Once  more,  if  Byron  is  sometimes  wearisome  with  his  guide 
book-like  snippets  of  reminiscence,  his  sequences  of  appropriat 
poetical  reflection,  is  not  Wordsworth  sometimes  the  same 
What  about  Ecclesiastical  Sonnets ;  what  about  those  supe: 
abundant  "  Memorials "  of  tours  in  Scotland,  tours  on  th 
Continent  ?  To  pause,  with  one's  "  foot  upon  a  nation's  dust 
to  "start  a  ghost  at  every  corner,"  is  of  the  essence  c 
Romanticism. 

Wordsworth  and  Byron,  then,  were  not  wholly  antithetic 
still  less  so  were  Wordsworth  and  Shelley.  Wordsworth,  for  hi- 
part,  mostly  ignored  Shelley,  though  he  knew  something  of  hi 
poetry,  and  thought  him  a  great  artist,  a  master  of  style.  Shelle 
thought  of  Wordsworth  much  as  "  the  lost  leader  ; "  but  h 
thought  of  him,  at  least  early  in  his  life,  as  an  excellent  poet.  T 
Wordsworth,  Shelley,  like  Byron,  was  a  moral  suspect,  a  teache 
of  dangerous  doctrines,  made  all  the  more  seductively  dangerou 
by  the  fineness  of  the  art  by  which  they  were  conveyed.  Ii' 
Wordsworth's  nature  there  were  recurrent  strata  of  common 
place ;  and  these  were  often  tapped  in  the  course  of  his  critica 
operations,  especially  upon  contemporaries.     One  of  the  mos 


FELLOW-WORKERS   IN   ROMANTICISM  263 

'^Plaracteristic   of  these    strata  was  the  conviction  that   poetry 

'^1  ght  to  be,  and  is,  didactic  in  the  sense  in  which  teaching  and 

^  I  Caching  are  ;  and  the  allied  conviction,  that  a  man's  poetry  is 

^'^  i  mere  transcript  of  his  opinions.     It  is  perhaps  impossible  to 

ticeive  Wordsworth    reading   through    ProinetJieus    Unbound 

^'  th  the  care  which  he  demanded  from  readers  of  TJie  Excursion  ; 

i;  t  it  is  certain  that,  if  he  had  done  so,  he  would  have  regarded 

'^  as  spreading  atheism  and  rebellion  clad  in  rainbows.     If  he 

d  read  The  Cenci^  he  (who  was  capable  of  calling  Coleridge's 

we  sensual  and  Christabel  indelicate)  would  have  said,  "  See 

lat  comes  of  loose  notions  about  marriage  !  "     As  regarded  his 

rn   poetry,    Wordsworth   of  course  transcended  this  view  of 

ings.     There  would  have  been  a  pretty  to-do  if  anybody  had 

lied  the  Tintern  Abbey  lines  pantheistic,  or  had  tried  to  connect 

em  with  their  author's  infrequent  church-going  in  those  days. 

ordsworth  would  have  replied,  and  replied  quite  properly,  that, 

iwever  necessary  dogma  may  be  in  religion,  it  is  not  required 

all  in  poetry ;  and  that,  if  a  poet  uses  quasi-x€^\g\o\x'S>  phraseo- 

"^Yy  he  does  so  with  at  least  a  philosopher's  or  scientist's  licence. 

^nd  as  to  the  church-going,  he  would  have  said  to  the  critic  qiid 

(itic,  "What  business  is  that  of  yours  ?" 

The  question  as  to  the  didactic  motive  and  practical  moral 
I  Feet  of  any  given  poetry,  and  the  question  whether  any  sup- 
])sed  taint  of  life  or  opinion  in  a  poet  communicates  itself  to 
Is  writings,  are  among  the  most  delicate  problems  in  literary 
(iticism.  If  Wordsworth  failed  to  see  that  the  problem  is 
dved  very  differently  in  the  cases  of  Byron  and  Shelley,  we 
i:ed  not  be  very  hard  on  him.  Nor  does  it  matter  if  he  failed 
t:  recognize  the  essential  kinship  between  his  own  work  and 
helley's.  For  us  who  read  both  poets  with  inward  as  well  as 
atward  eyes,  the  kinship  is  plain  enough. 

The  poets  had  very  similar  experiences  in  the  education  of 
ieling,  that  education  which  gives  a  permanent  direction  to 
petic  effort.  Shelley  has  not  left  so  much  express  auto- 
lography  as  Wordsworth  ;  but  he  has  left  enough,  direct  and 
iidirect,  to  show  how  he  was  led  to  his  view  of  the  poetry  of 
'lings.  If  we  do  not  learn  as  much  from  Alastor -axiA  the  Hj/mn 
Intellectual  Beauty  as  from  T/ie  Prelude  and  the  Tintern  Abbey 
oes,  we  learn  enough  to  convince  us  that  both  poets  felt  much 
le  same  need,  and  supplied  it  in  much  the  same  way.     Alastor, 


S64  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

for  all  its  beauty  and  characteristic  charm,  is  a  dreary  and  morll 
poem,  and  Wordsworth  would  doubtless  have  dismissed  it  5 
such,  horrified  at  the  suggestion  that  it  had  any  affinity  w  i 
himself.  The  hero  of  Alastor  is  not  even  Shell jy  as  he  was  ;  ; 
is  Shelley  as  he  might  have  been,  as  he  was  just  saved  frc. 
being.  Yet  Alastor  is,  mutatis  mutandis^  essentially  wl; 
Wordsworth  was  at  that  stage  in  the  "growth  of  a  poe; 
mind  "  before  "  love  of  Nature  "  had  begun  to  *'  lead  to  love  * 
man  "  ;  before  the  "  still,  sad  music  of  humanity  "  had  enter 
to  harmonize  with  the  tones  of  early  rapture.  It  is  very  like 
that  Shelley,  who  was  much  under  Wordsworth's  influence 
those  days,  borrowed  from  Wordsworth  the  phrase  "  natui 
piety,"  which  occurs  in  the  third  line  of  Alastor ;  and,  at  ai 
rate,  Shelley's  hero,  at  the  outset,  is  a  recognizably  Wore 
worthian  figure.  Wordsworth,  indeed,  was  never  morbid :  J 
never,  so  far  as  we  know,  made  his  bed  "in  charnels  and  c 
coffins,"  in  the  hope  of  inducing  some  communicative  gho' 
to  make  known  to  him  the  secret  of  things.  But,  on  the  whol 
the  analysis  of  Alastor's  early  "  natural  piety  "  might  be  that  < 
Wordsworth's — 

"  If  dewy  morn,  and  odorous  noon,  and  even. 
With  sunset  and  its  gorgeous  ministers, 
And  solemn  midnight's  tingling  silentness  ; 
If  autumn's  hollow  sighs  in  the  sere  wood, 
And  winter  robing  with  pure  snow  and  crowns 
Of  starry  ice  the  gray  grass  and  bare  boughs  ; 


If  no  bright  bird,  insect,  or  gentle  beast 
I  consciously  have  injured,  but  still  loved 
And  cherished  these  my  kindred." 

Alastor  is  a  purely  abstract  figure  ;  the  mere  shadow  of 
shade.  The  feverish  thirst  of  his  egoism  drives  him  into  experi 
ences  of  which  there  is  no  counterpart  in  Wordsworth's  biograph; 
or  imagination.  But,  like  Paracelsus,  like  Aprile,  or,  for  tha 
matter,  like  Faust,  Alastor  is  the  victim  of  a  false  view  of  th 
universe,  a  wilful  taking  of  the  part  for  the  whole,  the  wilfu 
rejection  of  the  divine  obligations  of  fellowship.  His  ideal  i; 
never  realized,  because  he  will  have  nothing  to  do  with  it' 
appointed  realization  in  the  ministries  of  social  life.     And  the 


FELLOW-WORKERS   IN  ROMANTICISM  265 

^^  Inowledge  of  this  was  a  critical  lesson  of  Wordsworth's  educa- 
•  on  as  a  poet.     Shelley  might  have  taken  as  the  motto  of  his 
oem  Wordsworth's  verses  on  Peel  Castle — 

"  Farewell,  farewell  the  heart  that  lives  alone, 
Housed  in  a  dream,  at  distance  from  the  Kind  ! 
Such  happiness,  wherever  it  be  known, 
Is  to  be  pitied ;  for  'tis  surely  blind. 


Ij  "  But  welcome  fortitude,  and  patient  cheer, 

And  frequent  sights  of  what  is  to  be  borne  ! 
Such  sights,  or  worse,  as  are  before  me  here. 
Not  without  hope  we  suffer  and  we  mourn." 


If 

In  the  Hymn  to  Intellectital  Beauty  Shelley  speaks  of  himself 
::  jithout  mystification  or  disguise.  But  he  first  speaks  of  Beauty 
\\\  the  most  universal  conception  of  it,  and  on  its  intellectual 
:  ither  than  its  sensuous  side,  in  language  which  inevitably 
;:  ijminds  us  of  Wordsworth.  For  what  is  Wordsworth's  most 
'7  i^neral  and  abstract  conception  of  Beauty  ? 

"  Beauty — a  living  Presence  of  the  earth, 
Surpassing  the  most  fair  ideal  Forms 
Which  craft  of  delicate  Spirits  hath  composed 
From  earth's  materials — waits  upon  my  steps  ; 
Pitches  her  tents  before  me  as  I  move, 
An  hourly  neighbour ;   Paradise,  and  groves 
Elysian,  Fortunate  Fields — like  those  of  old 
Sought  in  the  Atlantic  Main — why  should  they  be 
A  history  only  of  departed  things, 
Or  a  mere  fiction  of  what  never  was  ? 
For  the  discerning  intellect  of  Man, 
When  wedded  to  this  goodly  universe 
In  love  and  holy  passion,  shall  find  these 
A  simple  produce  of  the  common  day." 

In  Shelley's  Hymn  Wordsworth's  "  cheerful  faith  "  is 
unting.  Beauty  is  a  compensation  for  the  blank  and  chill 
igation  of  things  ;  it  is  not  their  efflorescence  and  fruition, 
ind  even  Beauty,  without  which  we  could  not  live,  has  the 
f^itiveness  of  the  rainbow,  not  the  steadfastness  of  the  day  and 
ii?ht. 


l" 


Spirit  of  Beauty,  that  dost  consecrate 

With  thine  own  tears  all  thou  dost  shine  upon 

Of  human  thought  or  form, — where  art  thou  gone  ? 


266  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

Why  dost  thou  pass  away  and  leave  our  state, 

This  dim  vast  vale  of  tears,  vacant  and  desolate  ? 

Ask  why  the  sunlight  not  for  ever 

Weaves  rainbows  o'er  yon  mountain  river. 

Why  aught  should  fail  and  fade  that  once  is  shown, 

Why  fear  and  dream  and  death  and  birth 

Cast  on  the  daylight  of  this  earth 

Such  gloom — why  man  has  such  a  scope 

For  love  and  hate,  despondency  and  hope  ? 

"  No  voice  from  some  sublimer  world  hath  ever 
To  sage  or  poet  these  responses  given — 
Therefore  the  names  of  Demon,  Ghost,  and  Heaven 
Remain  the  records  of  their  vain  endeavour, 
Frail  spells — whose  uttered  charm  might  not  avail  to  sever, 
From  all  we  hear  and  all  we  see, 
Doubt,  chance,  and  mutability. 
Thy  light  alone — like  mist  o'er  mountains  driven, 
Or  music  by  the  night  wind  sent 
Thro'  strings  of  some  still  instrument, 
Or  moonlight  on  a  midnight  stream, 
Gives  grace  and  truth  to  life's  unquiet  dream." 

The  melancholy,  the  agnosticism  of  all  this  are,  of  cour; 
quite  foreign  to  Wordsworth ;  but  not  so,  surely,  is  the  id 
which  underlies  the  lines  that  follow — 

"Man were  immortal  and  omnipotent 
Didst  thou,  unknown  and  awful  as  thou  art, 
Keep  with  thy  glorious  train,  firm  state  within  his  heart. 

Thou  messenger  of  sympathies 

That  wax  and  wane  in  lovers'  eyes — 
Thou — that  to  human  thought  art  nourishment, 

Like  darkness  to  a  dying  flame  !  " 

Shelley's  account  of  the  development  and  purification  of  1 
sense  of  the  unseen  is  very  like  Wordsworth's. 

"  While  yet  a  boy,"  he  tells  us,  "  I  sought  for  ghosts  "  ;  b 
he  neither  heard  nor  saw  them.  Then  suddenly  there  w 
revealed  to  him  the  more  excellent  way,  and  he  saw  Beauty — 

"  When  musing  deeply  on  the  lot 
Of  life,  at  the  sweet  time  when  winds  are  wooing 

All  vital  things  that  wake  to  bring 

News  of  birds  and  blossoming — 

Sudden,  thy  shadow  fell  on  me  ; 
I  shrieked,  and  clasped  my  hands  in  ecstasy  ! " 


FELLOW- WORKERS   IN   ROMANTICISM  267 

And  we  remember  Wordsworth  at  Hawkshead,  first  terrified 
»y  the  spirituality  of  Nature,  then,  in  later  days — 

*'  Only  then 
Contented,  when  with  bliss  ineffable 
I  felt  the  sentiment  of  Being  spread 
O'er  all  that  moves  and  all  that  seemeth  still ; 


O'er  all  that  leaps  and  runs,  and  shouts  and  sings, 

Or  beats  the  gladsome  air  .  .  . 

One  song  they  sang,  and  it  was  audible." 

The  last  stanza  of  Shelley's  Hymn  is  closely  Wordsworthian, 
^.  kth  an  echo  even  of  the  Wordsworthian  phraseology — 

"  The  day  becomes  more  solemn  and  serene 
When  noon  is  past — there  is  a  harmony 
In  autumn,  and  a  lustre  in  its  sky, 
Which  thro'  the  summer  is  not  heard  or  seen, 
As  if  it  could  not  be,  as  if  it  had  not  been  ! 
Thus  let  thy  power,  which  like  the  truth 
Of  Nature  on  my  passive  youth 
Descended,  to  my  onward  life  supply 
Its  calm — to  one  who  worships  thee, 
Whom,  Spirit  fair,  thy  spells  did  bind 
To  fear  himself,  and  love  all  human  kind." 

We  are  reminded,  not  only  of  the  conclusion  of  Wordsworth's 
mmortality  Ode,  but  of  the  moral  of  those  very  early  lines 
eft  on  a  Seat  in  a  Yew  Tree^  which  haunted  Charles  Lamb  after 
is  visit  to  Nether  Stowey — 

"  True  dignity  abides  with  him  alone 
Who,  in  the  silent  hour  of  inward  thought. 
Can  still  suspect,  and  still  revere  himself. 
In  lowliness  of  heart." 

Shelley  speaks  of  his  "  passive  youth  ;  "  but  that  is  not  the 

i  jnpression  left  on  us  by  his  account  of  the  attitude  of  young 

r''  Dets  towards  the  secrets  of  things.     Wordsworth  might  have 

ty'  tore  fittingly  called  his  youth  passive  in  this  sense  :  he  was  the 

^althy,  natural  boy,  whom  Nature  sought  with  her  revelations, 

"  More  Hke  a  man 
Flying  from  something  that  he  dreads,  than  one 
Who  sought  the  thing  he  loved." 

Shelley,  on  the  other  hand,  pursues  Nature  with  shrill  eager 


268  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

insistence  ;  follows  her  over  the  world  and  into  every  region  f 
thought  and  feeling  ;  and  will  have  her  secret  or  die.  That  s 
the  moral  of  Alastor's  feverish  quest  and  untimely  end. 

But  there  were  deeper  affinities  between  Wordsworth  ai 
Shelley  than  any  similarities  of  poetic  training  and  tenden '. 
They  were  alike  as  poets,  in  realizing,  conceiving,*the  Univen  ; 
and  realizing  it  as  spiritual  and  q?casi-person3ih  This  co  - 
munity  brings  them  closely  into  line  as  fellow- workers  in  te 
Romanticism  of  the  nineteenth  century.  They  two,  inde-l, 
share,  and  share  almost  equally,  the  honour  of  giving  to  Brit  i 
literature  a  truly  philosophical  poetry,  of  conceiving  for  poet^ 
the  ideality  and  unity  of  the  world,  with  the  conviction  of  1 2 
theologian  or  the  constructor  of  a  philosophy.  What  is  Won  - 
worth  at  his  deepest  and  loveliest  ? 

'•'  I  have  felt 
A  presence  that  disturbs  me  with  the  joy 
Of  elevated  thought ;  a  sense  sublime 
Of  something  far  more  deeply  interfused 
Whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting  suns 
And  the  round  ocean  and  the  living  air, 
And  the  blue  sky,  and  in  the  mind  of  man  ; 
A  motion  and  a  spirit  that  impels 
All  thinking  things,  all  objects  of  all  thought 
And  rolls  through  all  things." 

These  lines  may  be  said  to  be  Wordsworth's  text ;  they  r, 
the  key  to  all  his  poetry.  And  an  almost  equal  importars 
belongs  to  the  lines  from  Shelley's  Adonais,  in  which  M 
phrases  march  with  something  of  the  finality  of  the  clauses  o  i 
creed — 

"  That  Light  whose  smile  kindles  the  Universe, 
That  Beauty  in  which  all  things  work  and  move. 
That  Benediction  which  the  eclipsing  Curse 
Of  birth  can  quench  not,  that  sustaining  Love 
Which  through  the  web  of  being  blindly  wove 
By  man  and  beast  and  earth  and  air  and  sea 
Burns  bright  or  dim,  as  each  are  mirrors  of  1 

The  fire  for  which  all  thirst ;  now  beams  on  me."  p 

Every  reader  of  both  poets  must  recognize  how  represen  • 
tive  both  those  passages  are;  how  the  conviction  of  all  thir; 
as  combined  in,  and  informed  by,  a  unity,  to  which  it  is  r: 
mere  fancy  to  attribute  thought  and  love, explained,  for  Shell" 
and  Wordsworth   alike,   both   the  beauty  of  Nature  and  t: 


FELLOW-WORKERS   IN   ROMANTICISM  269 

Jlestiny  of  Man.     Wordsworth   read    the   riddle   as    a    realist, 

-:j  )helley  as  an  idealist ;  but  both  were  engaged  on   the  same 

iddle,  both  found  the  same  solution.     Wordsworth  attained  his 

^..iniversal   through  the    humble   folk    and   temperate    beauties 

i,j.,mong    which    he    lived ;    Shelley    through    courageous    and 

ajjpoundless  idealization,  a  new  mythology,  almost  new  heavens 

,nd  a  new  earth.     But  both  (religion  and  theology  apart)  were, 

/ithout  knowing  it,  worshippers  in  the  same  temple,  heralds  of 

he  same  hope. 

Also  they  were  alike  in  their  essential  devotion  to  human 

iterests  in  their  poetry.     It  needs  no  exhaustive  knowledge  of 

JjVordsworth  to  prove  that  mountains  and  lakes,  cuckoos  and 

aisles,  were  not  his  real  themes,  but  Man,  and  his  "  unconquer- 

ble  mind  "  ;  Man,  Nature's  child  and  spoiler  ;  whom  Nature 

an  punish  or  heal,  but  never  rob  of  his  lordship.     Wordsworth 

I'ent  to  school  to  Socialism   and   Revolution ;    and   what   he 

parned  in  France  determined  his  bent  towards  the  poetry  of 

illowship  for  ever,  made  certain  his  farewell  to  "  the  heart  that 

:ves  alone."     Nature  was  but  the  second  person  of  the  trinity 

|n  which   he   mused   in   his  solitude  ;   the  other  two   persons 

l^ere  Man   and    Human   Life.      Let   us    not   be   deceived   as 

0  Wordsworth's  humanity  by  his  comparative  indifference  to 

lie  interest  of  sex,  and  by  the  hodden  gray  and  slow  rustic 

,.„  jiovements  of  so  many  of  his  characters.     No   one  needs  to 

jj.|e    reminded   of    the    Sonnets    Dedicated    to    National   Inde- 

y'mdence  and  Liberty ,  and  the  passion  with  which  they  throb. 

..  lut  one  might  be  tranced  into  ignoring  the  depths  of  tragedy 

nd  pathos,  and  of  every  kind  of  human  interest  hidden  in  so 

lany  homely-sounding    little   poems,    in   Lucy   Gray,   in   the 

Matthew  group,  in  Michaely  in   The  Excursion — indeed,  where 

ot } — unless  one  kept  in  mind  that  the  high  argument  was  not 

:enery,  not  landscape,  but — 

"  How  exquisitely  the  individual  mind 
(And  the  progressive  powers  perhaps  no  less 
Of  the  whole  species)  to  the  external  world 
Is  fitted  : — and  how  exquisitely  too 
(Theme  this  but  little  heard  of  among  men) 
The  external  world  is  fitted  to  the  mind." 


If  the  case  was  so  with  Wordsworth,  it  was  equally  so  with 
'  thelley.     Matthew  Arnold  never  made  a  stranger  critical  lapse 


270  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

than  when  he  dismissed  Shelley  as  a  poet  of  clouds  and  sunset? 
except  when  he  proclaimed  his  failure  as  an  interpreter  c 
Nature.  We  need  not  ransack  Shelley's  biography  in  order  t 
find  evidence  of  his  love  of  Man  ;  it  is  the  pulse  and  nerve  c 
his  poetry.  We  have  just  reminded  ourselves  of  the  moral  o 
Alastor  ;  we  have  just  seen  the  poet's  commerce  with  Beaut; 
issue  in  a  kind  of  summary  of  individual  and  social  perfection- 

"  To  fear  himself,  and  love  all  human  kind." 

The  essential,  central  Shelley  is  not  in  lovely  bye-play  lik( 
The  Cloud  and  The  Sensitive  Plants  nor  even  in  mystica 
invention  like  The  Witch  of  Atlas.  It  is  in  TJie  Revolt  of  Islam 
Prometheus  Unbound,  The  Cenci,  Hellas — works  instinct  witl 
sociality,  with  morality.  Even  poems  primarily  and  ostensiblj 
of  Nature,  even  the  Skylark  and  the  Ode  to  the  West  Wind,  tak(f 
all  their  deepest  meaning  from  the  human  problem  and  struggle 
over  against  which  Nature  is  set. 

"  We  look  before  and  after 
And  pine  for  what  is  not  ; 

Our  sincerest  laughter 

With  some  pain  is  fraught  ; 
Our  sweetest  songs  are  those  that  tell  of  saddest  thought." 


"  Drive  my  dead  thoughts  over  the  universe 
Like  withered  leaves  to  quicken  a  new  birth  ! 
And,  by  the  incantation  of  this  verse, 
Scatter,  as  from  an  unextinguished  hearth 
Ashes  and  sparks,  my  words  among  mankind  ! 
Be  through  my  lips  to  unawakened  earth 
The  trumpet  of  a  prophecy  !  " 

Finally,  if  both  Wordsworth  and  Shelley  were  poets  of  Man,, 
and  especially  of  social  Man,  and  such  serious  philosophic  poets 
of  Man  as  British  literature  had  hardly  known  before,  they  were 
conspicuously  fellow-workers  in  the  task  of  interpreting  Nature, 
twin-priests  of  her  mysteries,  twin-prophets  of  her  message. 
Wordsworth's  work  in  this  capacity  needs  no  insisting  on. 
Readers  have  dwelt,  only  too  readily  and  exclusively,  on  his 
merits  as  a  poet  of  landscape.  They  have  recognized  that  he 
at  least,  after  the  long  spell  of  blindness  or  crooked  vision, 
wrote  of  natural  phenomena  with  his  eye  on  the  object ;  at  last 
spoke  the  "  truth  in  love  "  of  the  common  objects  of  the  country. 
But  Shelley's  idealism  has  deceived  many  readers  into  the  beliel 


FELLOW-WORKERS   IN   ROMANTICISM  271 

tat  his  scenery  was  all  invented :  that  his  poetic  world  was 
f  ryland,  where  realistic  standards  cannot  be  applied,  and  it  is 
relevant  to  ask  for  truth  of  portraiture.  And,  so  far  as  definite 
f  restrial  effects  are  concerned,  there  is  some  justification  for 
t2  belief  Shelley  had  the  generalizing,  not  the  particularizing 
bbit  in  his  Nature-work  ;  and  the  habit  prompts  him,  when  he 
iidealing  with  the  surface  of  the  earth  and  its  vegetation,  to 
ioalize  his  objects  beyond  reality.  This  is  very  conspicuous  in 
^^le  Sensitive  Plant,  in  which  Shelley  might,  if  he  would,  have 
g^en  us  a  real  garden,  and  does  not  do  so.  But  there  was  left  for 
bn  one  province — the  world  of  the  atmosphere,  of  the  clouds, 
wods,  and  dews — where  his  genius  hampered  him  with  no 
simbling-blocks,  where  his  idealism  was  the  handmaid  of  an 
uapproached  and  unapproachable  fidelity  to  fact.  Nothing, 
e^n  in  Wordsworth,  is  so  true  to  Nature  as  Shelley's  atmos- 
peric  and  meteorological  poetry.  The  atmosphere  was  his 
bue,  his  element,  and  he  could  not  report  falsely  of  it.  The 
Cncd  is  fantastic,  if  you  will  ;  but  every  statement  may  be 
/•ified  every  day.  It  is  because  the  skylark  is  a  bird  of  the 
\\  beyond  all  others — because  it  sings  at  heaven's  gate — that 
Sdley  so  loved  it  ;  and  it  is  because  his  poem  is  in  the  best 
je  se  realistic  that  it  is  so  popular.  The  beauty  of  the  Ode  to 
'J.  West  Wind  is  in  its  truth  ;  its  imagination  is  in  its  exacti- 
;i  e.  And  when  the  poet,  at  the  climax  of  his  passion,  calls 
'c  identification  with  the  wind — Be  thoii,  me,  impetuous  one  ! — 
icdoes  but  proclaim  himself  as  the  very  child  and  voice  of  the 
fluents  in  the  popular  sense  of  the  word.  Such  a  poet  of  the 
A^ither,  of  water,  air,  and  fire,  so  ethereal,  so  genuine,  there 
.1^1  never  been  before. 

Wordsworth's  kinship  with  Keats  was  much  more  distant 
:bn  his  kinship  with  Shelley.  To  the  one  poet  Wordsworth 
liiself  was  as  deaf  and  blind  as  to  the  other.  The  well-known 
Jt>y  of  his  comment  when  Keats  read  him  the  Hymn  to  Pan, 
Tm  Endymion  :  A  very  pretty  piece  of  paganisfu,  fairly  repre- 
jets,  we  may  be  sure,  the  kind  of  comment  he  would  have 
nie  on  the  rest  of  Keats's  poetry  if  he  had  known  it.  On 
:h  other  hand,  Keats  was  as  much  interested  in  Wordsworth 
is  Shelley  was  ;  and  something  is  to  be  learned  from  his 
reorded  feelings  and  opinions  about  him  as  to  the  relations, 
if  py,  between  Wordsworth's  work  and  his  own. 


272  WORDSWORTH   AND    HIS   CIRCLE 

Wordsworth  never  saw  Shelley;  but  Keats  he  met  severa 
times.     They  had  a  common  friend    in    Haydon,  the   painto 
who  took  pleasure  in  bringing  them  together.     In  Decembei 
1 8 17,  Wordsworth,  with  his  wife  and  Dora,  was  in  London.    H 
visited  his  brother,  Dr.  Christopher  Wordswortn,  at  Lambeth 
and  saw  many  friends.     The  Lambs,  of  course,  were  much  i: 
his  circle;  Coleridge  was  at  Highgate,  and  in  sociable  mood 
the  assiduous  Crabb  Robinson  was  everywhere  to   bear  testi 
mony.     It  was    an    important    moment    in    British  literature 
Coleridge   had   just    published  Biographia  Liter  aria,  and  wa 
taking  advice  as  to  the  wisdom    of  prosecuting  Blackwood,  c . 
which   the    first    number   had    appeared  in  October,  for  libei^; 
Shelley's  Revolt  of  Islam  was  just  out,  and  so  was  Keats's  firsjh 
miscellaneous  volume,  which  was  to  be  followed  by  Endymia.w 
in  the  spring.     Lalla  Rookh  was  a  poem  of  the  year,  and  Cokit 
ridge  was  disgusted  with  it.     Wordsworth  did  not  please  Crab'j[; 
Robinson  as  much  as  usual  on  this  occasion  ;  he  thought  hir|[ 
sometimes    contradictory  and    egotistical,  and   inclined   to  b 
hard  on  Coleridge.     When  Keats  first  saw  Wordsworth,  he  to  ■ 
had  an  unpleasing  impression.     He  thought  him  pompous  an;!; 
stiff;  he  kept  him  a  long  time  waiting  when  he  went  to  pay  hi}[: 
respects,  and  came  into  the  room  dressed  to  dine  with  anothejt; 
Commissioner  of  Stamps,  looking  grand  in  knee-breeches,  silji: 
stockings,   and   stiff  collar.     To    the    Bohemian,  open-necke L- 
Keats  this  was  repellent.   Yet  he  wanted  to  see  more  of  Word* ' 
worth,  and  Haydon  arranged  a  dinner-party  in  his  rooms  fc 
December  28th.     Charles   Lamb  was  there,  and  Words wortlit 
and  Keats's  friend,  Monkhouse.     Everybody  was  at   his  beijj^^; 
that  day,  though  to  Charles  Lamb's  best  alcohol  contribute]  ( 
considerably.     There  was  much  literary  talk  at  dinner.    Lamb' 
interventions  in  the  midst  of  Wordsworth's  solemn  discours 
reminded  Haydon  of  the  Fool's  interruptions  of  Lear's  passior. 
Lamb  grew  merrier  and   merrier.     Wordsworth  had  been  df 
nouncing  Voltaire.     "Now,"  said   Lamb,  "you  old  lake  poeii 
you  rascally  poet,  why  do  you  call  Voltaire  dull  ? "     A  propo^ 
of  Newton's  head  in  one  of  Haydon's  pictures,  they  discussetii 
poetry  and  science.     "  A  fellow,"  Lamb  said  of  Newton,  "  wb ' 
believed  nothing  unless  it  was  as  clear  as  the  three  sides  of 
triangle ! "     Keats   and   he   agreed   that   Newton's   prism  ha( 
destroyed  the  rainbow,  as  Keats  afterwards  sang  in  Lamia — 


FELLOW-WORKERS   IN  ROMANTICISM  273 

"  Do  not  all  charms  fly 
At  the  mere  touch  of  cold  philosophy  ? 
There  was  an  awful  rainbow  once  in  heaven  ; 
We  know  her  woof,  her  texture  ;  she  is  given 
In  the  dull  catalogue  of  common  things. 
Philosophy  will  clip  an  angel's  wings, 
Conquer  all  mysteries  by  rule  and  line, 
Empty  the  haunted  air,  and  gnomed  mine — 
Unweave  a  rainbow." 


In  all  the  fun  and  extravagance  Wordsworth  heartily  joined 
;er  his  manner.  After  dinner  an  inimitable  intellectual  toady- 
like  Wordsworth,  a  Comptroller  of  Stamps — turned  up,  and 

^  platitudes  gave  Lamb — now  more  than  half-seas-over — a 
eat  opportunity.  "  Don't  you  think,  sir,"  said  the  new  guest 
Wordsworth,  "that  Milton  was  a  great  genius?"  The  rest, 
DUgh  it  has  been  told  so  often,  must  be  told  yet  once  more  in 
aydon's  words.  "Keats  looked  at  me,  Wordsworth  at  the 
)mptroller.  Lamb,  who  was  dozing  by  the  fire,  turned  round 
d  said,  '  Pray,  sir,  did  you  say  Milton  was  a  great  genius  ? ' 
Id,  sir  ;  I  asked  Mr.  Wordsworth  if  he  were  not.'  '  Oh,'  said 
imb,  *then  you  are  a  silly  fellow.'  *  Charles!  my  dear 
liarles ! '  said  Wordsworth ;  but  Lamb,  perfectly  innocent  of 
e  confusion  he  had  created,  was  off  again  by  the  fire.     After 

ft  awful  pause,  the  Comptroller  said,  '  Don't  you  think  Newton 
great  genius  ? '  I  could  not  stand  it  any  longer.  Keats  put 
head  into  my  books.  .  .  .  Wordsworth  seemed  asking  himself, 
Vho  is  this  ? '  Lamb  got  up,  and  taking  a  candle,  said,  *  Sir, 
ill  you  allow  me  to  look  at  your  phrenological  development  ^ ' 
e  then  turned  his  back  on  the  poor  man,  and  at  every  question 
the  Comptroller  he  chaunted — 

" '  Diddle,  diddle,  dumpling,  my  son  John 
Went  to  bed  with  his  breeches  on.' 

"  The  man  in  office,  finding  Wordsworth  did  not  know  who 
*  was,  said  in  a  spasmodic  and  half-chuckling  anticipation  of 
sured  victory,  '  I  have  had  the  honour  of  some  correspondence 
ith  you,  Mr.  Wordsworth.'  *  With  me,  sir  ? '  said  Wordsworth, 
lot  that  I  remember.'  '  Don't  you,  sir  ?  I  am  a  Comptroller 
Stamps.'  There  was  a  dead  silence  ;  the  Comptroller  evidently 
inking  that  was  enough.  While  we  were  waiting  for  Words- 
orth's  reply,  Lamb  sung  out — 

T 


274  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

" '  Hey  diddle,  diddle, 
The  cat  and  the  fiddle. ' 

"  *  My  dear  Charles  ! '  said  Wordsworth — 

'"Diddle,  diddle,  dumpling,  my  son  John," 

chaunted  Lamb,  and  then  rising,  exclaimed,  '  Do  let  me  ha\ 
another  look  at  that  gentleman's  organs.'     Keats  and  I  hurrie 
Lamb  into  the  painting-room,  shut  the  door,  and  gave  way  1 1 
inextinguishable  laughter.    Monkhouse  followed  and  tried  to  g( 
Lamb  away.     We  went  back,  but  the  Comptroller  was  irrecor 
cilable.     We  soothed  and  smiled  and  asked  him  to  supper.     H 
stayed,  though  his  dignity  was  sorely  affected.     However,  bein  , 
a  good-natured  man,  we  parted  all  in  good  humour,  and  no  i: 
effects  followed.     All  the  while,  until  Monkhouse  succeeded,  w 
could  hear  Lamb  struggling  in  the  painting-room,  and  callinL,., 
at  intervals,  '  Who  is  that  fellow  ?     Allow  me  to  see  his  or^^fan 


Keats's  feeling  about  Wordsworth  wavered,  but  was  on  th^  i 
whole    respectful   and   appreciative.     In   a   sonnet  of  1816  hi 
dedicated  to  him  four  sonorous  lines — 

"  Great  spirits  now  on  earth  are  sojourning 
He  of  the  cloud,  the  cataract,  the  lake,  ,r 

Who  on  Helvellyn's  summit,  wide  awake  it 

Catches  his  freshness  from  Archangel's  wing." 

He    probably   agreed  with    Leigh    Hunt,  who,  with  man} . 
grumbles,   recognized    Wordsworth    as    the    foremost   of   the 
reformers  of  poetry  after  the  post-Restoration  lapse,  whose  work  ;- 
was  celebrated   by   Keats  in  his    Sleep  and  Poetry.     Haydon.j 
proposed  to  send  the  sonnet  to  Wordsworth  ;  and  Keats  told.'j 
him  that  the  proposal  put  him  *' out  of  breath."     "You  know," 
he  wrote,  "  with  what  reverence  I  would  send  my  well-wishes  to 
him."     He  was  never  weary  of  repeating  the   hitimations  oj 
Immortality  Ode  ;  and  in  January,  181 8,  when  he  was  fresh  from,j 
personal  intercourse  with  Wordsworth,  he  spoke  of  The  Excur- 
sion as  one  of  the  few  satisfactory  artistic  products  of  the  time. 
On  the  other  hand,  he  was  riled  by  much  in  both  Wordsworth's 
personality  and   his  poetry.      He  wrote    to  his  brothers   that 
Wordsworth  had  "  left  a  bad  impression  wherever  he  visited  in 
town  by  his  egotism,  vanity,  and  bigotry."     Yet  he  maintained 
that   he   was  "a  great  poet."     He  spoke  of  himself  once  as 


FELLOW-WORKERS   IN   ROMANTICISM  275 

li:ng  "half  of  Wordsworth."     In  a  letter  to  John  Hamilton 

Rynolds — who  wrote  the  first  skit  on  Peter  Bell — he  entered 

J  on    a    subtle    criticism  of  Wordsworth's  achievement.     He 

rclized    that    the    human    heart   was    indeed,  as  Wordsworth 

imed,  the  main  region  of  his  song.     He  wondered  whether 

had  real  "epic  passion."     He  compared  him  with  Milton. 

th   poets   he  felt   to   be    partial,    fragmentary ;    he   wanted 

rdsworth  to  produce  something  more,  something  different. 

\  th  a  truly  critical  instinct  he  took  the  Tintern  Abbey  lines  as 

resenting  Wordsworth  at  his  best,  and  he  evidently  felt  in  its 

less   the   power  of  those  lines — how  firmly  they  front  the 

stery  of  life  ;  how  clearly  they  see  and  show  the  light  beyond 

Milton,  he  thought,  had  no  such  vision  of  the  light.     As  for 

iself,  he  was  but  a  child  in  knowledge  of  life,  beginning  to  be 

:  iscious  of  its  mystery  and  adversity,  and  of  doors  opening,  but 

y  into  darkness. 

In  the  summer  of  1818  Keats  was  walking  with  a  friend  in 

Lake  country,  and  of  course  called  at  Rydal  Mount.     To 

disappointment  and  displeasure  Wordsworth  was  at  Kendal 

ing  part  in  the  General  Election  of  the  year  ;  so  Keats  could 

y  leave  a  note  on  the  mantelpiece.     It  was  the  election  about 

!ch  Wordsworth  wrote  his  Addresses  to   the  Freeholders  of 

^stmorland ;    and  Keats,   though   much  more  indifferent  to 

itics  than  Shelley  and  Byron,  was  of  course  on  the  Liberal 

;,  and  antagonistic  to  Wordsworth  accordingly. 

Some   months   later,    Keats   was    putting    himself   into   a 

erent  poetic   category   from   Wordsworth's,  which   he   dis- 

tf^uished    as    the   "egotistical    sublime,"   and   as   containing 

A^)rdsworth  alone.     He  ranked  himself,  on  the  other  hand,  as  a 

7umal poet, i.e.  a  non-moral  one  ;  an  artist  without  preferences, 

hidng  "as  much  delight  in  conceiving  an  lago  as  an  Imogen." 

Hre  he  was  deeply  unjust  to  poetry  ;  but  he  was  not  unjust  to 

huiself.     Indeed,  if  we  combine  Keats's  two  self-estimates — 

thj  one,  namely,  and  his  consciousness  of  himself  as  hardly 

bcond  the  stage  of  childhood  in  his  poetic  experience  of  life,  we 

sUl  understand  his  art,  and  the  slenderness  of  the  tie  which 

bids  it  to  Wordsworth's. 

;  Keats  did  not  live  long  enough  to  make  the  human  heart  or 
hman  life  the  main  object — he  hardly  made  it  at  all  an  object 
-~f  his  song.     He  is   perhaps   the   most   non-moral   poet  in 


'216  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS  CIRCLE 

English,  certainly  the  most  non-moral  English  poet  of  mode, 
times.     And  he  was  this  not  from  any  weakness,  not  from  a- 
error,  but  from  a  preoccupation  with  mere  beauty  which  vc, 
entirely  honourable  and  natural,  and,  as  he  himself  recognizi, 
belongs  to  the  youth,  the  opening  stage,  of  the  poet's  experien  , 
He  was  not  one  to  express  at  any  time,  like  Shelley,  his  ecsta' 
in  a  *' shriek"  ;  but  his  thirst  for  the  beautiful,  his  joy  in  it,  v 
of  the  kind  which  Shelley  felt  when  he  made  his  quest  "  a 
clapped  his  hands"  at  his  discovery.     Only,  as  to  Shelley,  1: 
intellectual  and  moral  revealed  themselves  in  such  close  c( 
tiguity  with  the  beautiful,  that  he  could  hardly  for  a  mom( 
cease  to  be  a  moral  poet ;  human  error  and  human  hope,  as 
conceived  them,  were  interwoven  with  every  show  of  Natui 
and  beauty  was  raised,  by  the  presence  of  its  opposites,  into  t 
unearthly  and  divine.     Keats  had  his  moral  moments,  his  br" 
essays  at  a  "  criticism  of  life."     In  his  Ode  to  Melancholy  and 
the  great  lyrical  apostrophe  to  sorrow  in  Endyrnion,  he  toucl 
the  harp   with  all  his  might,  and  reveals  a  pessimism  whi 
would  be  unendurable  if  it  were  not  fugitive.     Here  and  th( 
in  Hyperion^   he  utters,  without   ceasing   to  be   his   best  s( 
wisdom  as  deep  and  as  mellow  as  ever  was  Shakespeare's 
Wordsworth's. 

"  Now  comes  the  pain  of  truth  to  whom  'tis  pain  ; 
O  folly  !  for  to  bear  all  naked  truths, 
And  to  envisage  circumstance,  all  calm, 
That  is  the  top  of  sovereignty." 

The  whole  of  Oceanus's  speech  in  the  second  book,  in  whi 
these  lines  occur,  has  exactly  as  much  ethical  as  aesthetic  vab 
It  is  very  likely  that  if  Keats  had  lived,  lived  beyond  his  intoxi< 
tion  with  beauty,  his  mere  artist's  satisfaction,  he  would  he 
given  us  much  poetry  of  a  like  strain.  But,  taking  his  fr; 
mentary  bequest  as  it  stands,  we  feel  that  the  central  Keati 
in  The  Eve  of  S.  Agnes,  Lamia,  the  Ode  to  Atttitmn,  the  Ode. 
Psyche  ;  in  poetry  which  shows  him  with  a  boundless  appet 
for  the  beautiful  as  the  pleasurable,  and  not  as  an  uneartl 
abstraction,  but  as  actualized  in  beautiful  things,  taken  inc' 
criminately  from  the  earth  and  air,  from  Grecian  mythology, 
from  mediaeval  romance.  The  essential  Keats  is  an  artist 
painter  of  pictures  for  beauty's  sake.     And  he  is  an  artist, 


FELLOW-WORKERS   IN   ROMANTICISM  277 

v;  said,  without  preferences,  "having  as  much  deh'ght  in  con- 
civing  an  lago  as  an  Imogen,"  except,  we  may  add,  that  his 
-tpral  sense  is  hardly  as  yet  enough  developed  to  make  him 
(rjj  Ice  much  interest  in  either  of  them. 

;rij     Keats's  non-morality,  his  love  of  "  pretty  pieces  of  Paganism," 

^  noves  him  very  far  from  Wordsworth.     But  we  are  here  com- 

;■   ring  our  poets,  less  with  each  other  than  with  their  predecessors ; 

■    :  are  thinking  of  them  as,  among  them,  restoring  to  English 

J,,  etry  certain  great  things  which  it  seemed  to  have  lost ;  and 

;j,  p  greater  the  unlikenesses  within  the  band,  the  more  interest- 

,3,  g  is  the  joint  result.     We  have  just  quoted  a  passage  from 

Isats  which  Wordsworth  might  have  countersigned ;  and,  as  for 

Iiganism,  it  has  been  pointed  out  that  Wordsworth  himself  had 

cmoment  when  he  cried — 

"  Great  God  !  I'd  rather  be 
A  Pagan  suckled  in  a  creed  outworn  ; 
So  might  I,  standing  on  this  pleasant  lea, 
Have  glimpses  that  would  make  me  less  forlorn  ; 
Have  sight  of  Proteus  rising  from  the  sea; 
Or  hear  old  Triton  blow  his  wreathed  horn." 

But  it  is  not  in  such  stray  parallelisms  that  the  fellowship  of 
eats  and  Wordsworth,  or,  indeed,  the  unity  of  all  the  great 
pets  of  the  Romantic  Revival,  is  to  be  found.  Wordsworth 
i;id  Keats  were  at  least  on  the  same  plane  in  their  sense,  quick 
jid  novel  and  inspiring,  of  what  Keats  called  the  "  poetry  of 
(.rth "  ;  they  both  possessed  what  is  the  innermost  nerve  of 
])etry,  the  power  of  finding  the  beautiful,  and  showing  it  in 
leir  words  to  others  for  all  time.  And,  different  as,  in  many 
ispects,  their  ideas  of  it  were,  they  were  both  wise  enough  to 
i,iow  that  beauty  is  a  unity  in  diversity  ;  that  it  has  its  temperate 
;id  torrid  zones  ;  its  simplicities  as  well  as  its  complexities  ;  its 
:straints  as  well  as  its  licences;  that  it  is  here  as  well  as 
pnder ;  in  the  spirit  as  well  as  in  the  body.  Both  poets  meet 
'.  the  shelter  of  Shelley's  phrase — 

"  That  Beauty  in  which  all  things  work  and  move." 

In  this  comprehensiveness  of  the  beautiful  is  to  be  found  the 
ommunity  of  that  poetry  of  the  early  nineteenth  century  to 
hich  Wordsworth  was  so  great  a  contributor.  Hardly  one  of 
is  peers  and  younger  contemporaries,  certainly  not  Southey, 


278  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CHICLE 

not  Byron,  not  Scott,  but  was  alive  with  a  quick  sense  of  bea 
such  as  generations  had   not   felt.      It   is   the   quickness, 
novelty,  the  pulsing  throb  of  the  sense,  which  makes  it  impossi 
for  the  poets  of  the  Romantic  Revival  to  disown  one  anotl; 
Poets   with   the   classical   ideal,  poets   like   Milton   and  Gr 
splendid  as  are  their  services  to  the  beautiful,  do  not  give  j 
feeling  of  novelty,  of  young  enthusiasm,  which  the  Romantic 
gave.     They  too  cannot  disown,  be  disowned  ;  but  they  are  i  i 
separate  province,  the  province  held  by  tradition,  by  its  maje 
its  dignity,  its  repose. 

Wordsworth  has  often  been  compared  with  Milton  ;  but  r 
it  seems,  with  any  fruitful  result.  One  may  set  the  blank  ve 
of  the  one  beside  that  of  the  other  to  establish  the  inferiority 
Wordsworth's.  They  were  alike  patriots,  alike  grave,  mor 
serious  poets.  But  Wordsworth  was  an  innovator  and  a  reston 
and  it  was  no  tradition,  Miltonic  or  other,  that  he  restored, 
was  of  his  own  underived,  vigorous  individuality  that  he  ga' 
In  spite  of  his  sobriety,  his  narrowness,  his  cold  welcome 
novelty,  the  world  in  which  he  lived  was  a  new  world,  and 
saw  and  felt  it  anew,  with  an  untaught  and  enthusiastic  mir 
His  poetry  was  no  product  of  culture  ;  it  was  the  immedic 
reaction  of  an  original  mind  to  the  beautiful  significance 
things.  And  it  was  the  same  with  his  peers.  They  all  felt  t 
world  afresh ;  and  as  they  felt,  they  sang,  a  harmony  of  ma 
voices. 


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CHAPTER   XIII 

AFTERGLOW 

•^  YDAL  MOUNT,  to  which  the  Wordsworths  moved  from 
.\  Grasmere  in  1813,  is  one  of  the  most  purely  ideal  poets' 
i  rsidences  in  the  world.  Hidden,  like  the  nest  of  a  shy  bird, 
f )m  wanton  eyes  and  approaches,  it  looks  out  frankly  in 
to  directions.  It  stands  on  a  spur  of  Nab  Scar,  rising  with 
sdden  steepness  from  the  road,  just  at  the  angle — almost 
aright  angle — between  the  valley  containing  Rydal  lake,  and 
t2  valley  along  which  the  Rothay  flows  to  Windermere.  Down 
tis  latter  valley,  past  Loughrigg  and  across  the  light  smoke- 
veath  of  Ambleside,  the  homely  frontage  of  the  house  looks 
suthward  to  the  distant  gleam  of  the  lake.  With  a  yet  nobler 
£d  more  subtly  suggestive  outlook,  a  door  in  the  western  gable, 
cd  the  rocky  terraces  to  which  it  leads,  show  Rydal  water  and 
i  island,  the  northern  side  of  Loughrigg,  and  the  way  to  Gras- 
rsre.  On  the  eastern  side  lies,  unseen  from  the  Mount,  the 
f  e  park-like  demesne  of  Rydal  Hall,  with  the  wild  heights  and 
r:esses  of  Fairfield  in  the  background. 

The  house  and  grounds,  save  for  some  modernizing  of 
\ndows,  and  the  hand  of  time  on  shrub  and  tree,  have  been 
l.rdly  changed  since  the  Wordsworths  lived  and  died  there, 
'lere  are  the  same  pleasant  low-roofed  sitting-rooms,  the  same 
load  central  staircase,  the  twisted  chimneys,  the  bedrooms  where 
te  poet  and  his  wife  and  sister  died.  There  is  the  same  view- 
pint  southwards,  led  to  by  descending  and  ascending  steps, 
ibove  all,  there  is  the  extension  and  expansion  of  what  gave 
bve  Cottage  its  chief  charm — a  simple  and  yet  ingenious  land- 
eape-gardening ;  steps,  terraces,  shrubbery,  summer-houses ; 
tcky  paths,  pink  with  Wordsworth's  own  geranium,  and  yellow 
vth  the  pale  poppy,  which  haunts  all  dwellers  among  the  Lakes. 

279 

li 


280  WORDSAVORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

Rydal  Mount  has  a  spaciousness  and  dignity  which  dwarf  poo 
little    Dove  Cottage   and   its   tiny  hanging-orchard   into   ven 
humble  stature.     Yet  in  both  places  there  is  the  same  spiritua 
suggestion  ;    the   same   essential    dignity  ;    the   same   undying 
association.     Here,  as  there,  is  a  perfect  setting  for  "  plain  living; 
and  high  thinking,"  the  fitting  abode  of  a  Nature-worshippei 
for  whom  the  humblest  flower  and   loneliest  rock  speak   thu 
language  of  a  Universal  Mind  and  Heart  ;  here,  as  there,  we  seej- 
and  hear  the  same  stooping,  burly,  austere,  carelessly  clad  figure^ 
somewhat  harsh  in  voice  and  feature,  but  with  eyes  of  infinittj 
expression,  muttering  lines  of  verse  as  he  paces  up  and  dowr 
his  terraces,  or  lies  at  length  on  daisy-sprinkled  grass.     Ryda, 
Mount  was  a  fit  place  for  the  kind  of  star-gazing  that  the  Words, 
worths  loved  ;  for  the  stars  seemed  to  touch  the  hilltops  at  th(i 
back,  while   among   the   trees   in    the   valley   southward   the) 
twinkled  like  lamps.     Wordsworth  drew  from  them  a  parable, 
of  his  poetic  mission.    "  If  thou  indeed,"  he  exclaims,  addressing. 
the  Poet— 

*  "  If  thou  indeed  derive  thy  light  from  Heaven, 

.JKr    J,  Then,  to  the  measure  of  that  heaven-born  light 

Shine,  Poet !  in  thy  place,  and  be  content :  ] 

The  stars,  pre-eminent  in  magnitude, 

And  they  that  from  the  zenith  dart  their  beams,  ] 

(Visible  though  they  be  to  half  the  earth,  < 

Though  half  a  sphere  be  conscious  of  their  brightness)  ' 

Are  yet  of  no  diviner  origin, 

No  purer  essence,  than  the  one  that  burns, 

Like  an  untended  watch-fire  on  the  ridge 

Of  some  dark  mountain  ;  or  than  those  which  seem 

Humbly  to  hang,  like  twinkling  winter  lamps, 

Among  the  branches  of  the  leafless  trees. 

All  are  the  undying  offspring  of  one  sire : 

Then,  to  the  measure  of  the  light  vouchsafed, 

Shine,  Poet !  in  thy  place,  and  be  content." 

i 
An  increase  of  income,  won  not  without  much  difficulty,  en- 
I  abled  the  poet  to  go  to  the  larger  house,  and  become  something 
of  a  country  gentleman  on  a  small  scale.  Lord  Lonsdale  made 
him  Commissioner  of  Stamps  for  Westmorland,  with  a  salary, 
of  ;^400  a  year,  and  the  modest  Wordsworth  was  thus  enabled, 
to  snap  his  fingers  at  mere  literary  profits.  But  it  was  chiefly 
to  escape  from  the  shadow  of  death  at  Grasmere,  from  the  daily, 


AFTERGLOW  281 

Imrly  sight  of  his  children's  new  graves,  that  he  finally  left  the 
car  Vale.  The  moment  had  come,  which  comes  now  and 
rain  in  most  lives,  when  a  new  leaf  must  be  firmly  and  reso- 
Itely  turned.  And  so  Wordsworth,  at  forty-three,  entered  on 
te  last  thirty-seven  years  of  his  life. 

When  one  thinks  of  these  figures,  and  looks  at  the  mass  of 
petry  yet  to  be  produced  by  Wordsworth,  it  may  seem  mere 
j.radox  to  speak  of  the  move  to  Rydal  as  a  sunset,  and  the  life 
tere  as  afterglow.  And,  indeed,  it  may  be  put  in  much  too 
|.radoxical  a  way.  Matthew  Arnold,  with  the  best  intentions, 
cd  Wordsworth  a  disservice  when  he  spoke  as  if  his  only  good 
petry  had  been  composed  between  1798  and  1808.  The 
cntrast  between  Wordsworth's  best  work  and  his  merely  good, 
c  even  that  between  his  best  and  his  worst,  striking  as  it  is,  is 
i)t  miraculous ;  and  his  later,  his  Rydalian  work,  is  full  of 
iterest  for  all  lovers  of  him  and  lovers  of  poetry.  Yet  it  is 
iiquestionable  that  Wordsworth  did  not  live  or  produce  at  his 
iilest  strength  after  he  went  to  Rydal  Mount.  He  became 
jematurely  elderly ;  his  verse  lost  much  of  its  passion  and 
f  .icity ;  his  splendid  patriotism  tended  towards  a  prejudiced 
isularity ;  his  fine  instinct  for  public  righteousness  towards  a 
(lerulous  and  close-fisted  conservatism.  Wordsworth's  youth 
i  one  sense  departed  so  early ;  the  mood  of  the  Tijitem  Abbey 
lies  and  the  Immortality  Ode,  the  mood— so  to  call  it — of 
.evermore  !  set  in  so  soon  and  so  permanently,  that  at  forty- 
tree  Wordsworth,  who  was  always  old-fashioned,  had  become 
tally  old.  If  he  had  lived  to  be  a  hundred,  he  would  hardly 
l.ve  been  older  in  spirit  in  1870  than  he  was  in  1820. 

Passionate  movements  rocked  the  crust  of  British  life  while 
''ordsworth  lived  at  Rydal.  Liberalism,  with  its  lurid  portents 
iid  solid  achievements  ;  the  poetry  of  Shelley  and  Keats ; 
iientific  development  and  mechanical  invention  ;  Tractarianism  ; 
C'lartlsm  ;  but  of  none  of  them  did  Wordsworth  sing ;  in  none 
(I  them  did  he  take  other  interest  than  that  of  a  rather  languid 
i\d  often  disapproving  spectator.  His  days  and  his  verse  flowed 
(I  serenely;  his  fame  steadily  and  noiselessly  grew;  his  hair 
s.vered,  his  high-nosed  face  grew  grimly  lined  ;  then,  unex- 
j'lctedly,  he  sickened  and  died  when  he  was  just  eighty.  Hardly 
iiy  fresh  light  or  heat  was  given  out  during  the  thirty-seven 
;ears.     It  was  mostly  afterglow. ' ' 


le: 


282  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

So  far  as  quantitative  production  went,  there  was  no  sign  of  ' 
stint   or   decline.      In    1814   appeared    T/ze   Excursion,   which 
Wordsworth  meant  to  be,  and  which  in  many  respects  is,  of  his 
ripest  work  ;  but  that,  as  we  know,  was  first  conceived  at  Race- 
down,  and  the  greatest  part  of  it  was  written  at  Grasmere.     It 
was  issued  from  Rydal  Mount  with  a  preface,  and  a  Dedicatory 
Sonnet  to  Lord  Lonsdale,  somewhat  in  the  strain,  though  with 
none  of  the  spirit,  of  the  days  of  pre-Johnsonian  patronage. 
Waterloo  year,  181 5,  is  very  important  in  Wordsworth's  biblio-  ;  U 
graphy,  for  then    appeared   the  first   collected    edition    of  his 
poems,  and  also  TJie  White  Doe  of  Rylstone.     As  for  The  White 
Doe,  we   remember  that  he  introduced    De  Ouincey  to  it  in 
1807;  but  it  was  regularly  begun  at  Stockton-upon-Tees,  and 
completed  at  Dove  Cottage.     Among  the  collected  poems  there 
was  one  new  one  of  great  importance — a  noble  first-fruits  of 
Rydal  Mount — Wordsworth's  finest  classical  poem,  Laodamia. 
He  himself  once,  in  one  of  his  flashes  of  excessive  self-esteem, 
put  it  with  Lycidas  in  a  unique  class.     If  that  was  too  bold,  it  is 
not  too  much  to  find  in  Laodamia  a  genuine  phase  of  the  Greek 
spirit,  the  Greek  restraint,  the  Greek  subordination  of  personal  i 
emotion   to  public  obligation,  expressed    in    English  verse  of  i 
the    stateliest  grace.     Laodamia  wins  back   the   spirit  of  her 
slaughtered  lord,  Protesilaus,  but  only  to   learn   from  his  lips 
the  philosophy  of  an  emotion  transcending  and  outlasting  even  : 
the  holiest  nuptial  passion  ;  to  hear  a  description  of  Elysium  ■ 
touched  with  hues  of  the  Christian  heaven. 

"  Be  taught,  O  faithful  Consort,  to  control 
Rebellious  passion  ;  for  the  gods  approve 
The  depth,  and  not  the  tumult,  of  the  soul." 

"  He  spake  of  love,  such  love  as  Spirits  feel 
In  worlds  whose  course  is  equable  and  pure  ; 
No  fears  to  beat  away — no  strife  to  heal— 
The  past  unsighed  for,  and  the  future  sure  ; 
Spake  of  heroic  arts  in  graver  mood 
Revived,  with  finer  harmony  pursued  ; 

"  Of  all  that  is  most  beauteous — imaged  there 
In  happier  beauty;  more  pellucid  streams, 
An  ampler  ether,  a  diviner  air, 
And  fields  invested  with  purpureal  gleams  ; 
Climes  which  the  sun,  who  sheds  the  brightest  day 
Earth  knows,  is  all  unworthy  to  survey." 


AFTERGLOW  283 

Here  is  taught  the  lesson  of  ideal  widowhood,  but  in 
vain — 

"  Learn,  by  a  mortal  yearning,  to  ascend — 
Seeking  a  higher  object.     Love  was  given, 
Encouraged,  sanctioned,  chiefly  for  that  end  ; 
For  this,  the  passion  to  excess  was  driven — 
That  self  might  be  annulled  :  her  bondage  prove 
The  fetters  of  a  dream,  opposed  to  love." 

Laodamia  could  not  take  the  lesson :  as  the  Spirit  retired  from 
her,  she  died  in  her  rebellious  passion — 

"  And,  as  for  a  wilful  crime, 
By  the  just  Gods,  whom  no  weak  pity  moved, 
Was  doomed  to  wear  out  her  appointed  time, 
Apart  from  happy  Ghosts," 

and  the  poem  ends  in  tragic  hopelessness. 

In  the  same  first  Rydal  year  was  written  another  classical 
poem,  Dzon.  Dion  of  Syracuse,  the  rich  warrior  who  forsook 
wealth  for  philosophic  poverty,  and  was  driven  from  Sicily  to 
attach  himself  to  Plato  at  Athens,  showed  himself  in  Words- 
worth's "study  of  imagination  "  as  a  kind  of  swan-like  being,  an 
image  of  "  haughtiness  without  pretence,"  unfolding  "  a  still 
magnificence."  The  poet  sees  him  Plato's  pupil,  learning  the 
secret  of  high  life — 

"  What  pure  homage  if/ien  did  wait 
On  Dion's  virtues,  while  the  lunar  beam 
Of  Plato's  genius,  from  its  lofty  sphere, 
Fell  round  him  in  the  grove  of  Academe, 
Softening  their  inbred  dignity  austere  ; 

That  he,  not  too  elate 

With  self-sufficing  solitude, 
But  with  majestic  lowliness  endued, 

Might  in  the  universal  bosom  reign, 
And  from  affectionate  observance  gain 

Help,  under  every  change  of  adverse  fate." 

But  alas  !  he  goes  back  to  Syracuse  as  a  vulgar  conqueror,  and 
his  hands  are  reddened  with  blood.  The  poet  calls  on  Academe 
to  mourn — 

"  Mourn,  hills  and  groves  of  Attica  !  and  mourn 
Ilissus,  bending  o'er  thy  classic  urn  ! 
Mourn  .  .  . 


284  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

For  him  who  to  divinity  aspired 
Intent  to  trace  the  ideal  path  of  right 
But  He  hath  overleaped  the  eternal  bars."  f 


A  hideous  spectre  appears  to  him  ;  the  spectre  of  the  lower  life 
into  which  he  has  gone  down.  He  sinks  into  death  ;  and  for 
him  there  is  no  resurrection.  Nothing  but  a  stern  moral 
survives — 

"  Him  only  pleasure  leads,  and  peace  attends, 
Him,  only  him,  the  shield  of  Jove  defends, 
Whose  means  are  fair  and  spotless  as  his  ends." 

/  Yarrozv  Visited  is  another  of  the  Rydal  first-fruits  which  the 
(fl  world  will  not  willingly  allow  to  decay.  In  1814  Wordsworth 
^  paid  his  second  visit  to  Scotland,  this  time  with  his  wife  and  her 
sister,  Sarah  Hutchinson.  There  was  no  Dorothy  to  write 
another  journal ;  and  the  commemorative  poems  are  few.  But,  on 
a  September  day,  Wordsworth,  with  James  Hogg,  the  '*  Ettrick 
Shepherd,"  and  a  certain  Dr.  Anderson  (whose  collection  of 
"  British  Poets "  had  introduced  Wordsworth  to  Chaucer  and 
the  Elizabethans)  walked  from  Traquair  into  that  Vale  of 
Yarrow  which  he  would  not  see  eleven  years  earlier.  What  he 
found  there  is  perhaps  too  well  known  to  be  written  out  here. 

Waterloo  and  its  sequels  brought  forth  at  last  the  Thanks- 
giving Ode  of  January,  18 16,  with  some  flanking  poems.  One 
turns  to  them  with  interest  to  see  how  they  compare  with  the 
great  anti-Napoleonic  sonnets.  They  are  fine  and  impressive, 
though  they  lack  the  fresh  fire  of  the  early  sonnets. 

It  is  plain  that  for  Wordsworth  the  battle  of  Waterloo 
closed  an  epoch  :  the  monster,  begotten  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, was  laid  low ;  the  killing  spell  was  lifted  off  the  world,  and 
by  providentially  chosen  Britain.  Thenceforward  Wordsworth's 
social  and  political  feeling  took  the  normal  Conservative  course  ; 
the  fort  of  English  liberty,  the  fort  of  English  religion,  secured 
by  a  perfectly  balanced  constitution,  a  perfectly  reformed  Church, 
were  to  be  held  at  all  costs.  Wordsworth's  Rydalian  muse  was 
a  faultless  conformist. 

The  records  of  hardening  conformity  are  abundant,  both  in 
prose  and  verse.  Towards  the  Liberal  movement  which  set  in 
in  the  'twenties  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  which  led  to  the 


AFTERGLOW  285 

Reform  Bill  and  other  great  measures  of  constitutional  and 
administrative  amendment  in  the  'thirties,  Wordsworth  felt  an 
aversion  which  was  natural,  and  may  or  may  not  have  been 
justifiable  ;  but  his  dismal  vaticinations,  his  conviction,  uttered 
with  accompaniment  of  inarticulate  groans,  that  Liberalism, — 
whether  it  took  the  form  of  Catholic  Emancipation,  of  the 
rationalizing  of  Parliamentary  representation,  the  advocacy  of 
vote  by  ballot,  or  even  of  municipal  reform, — was  a  mere  process 
of  ruin,  are  hardly  more  than  psychological  eccentricities.  He 
wrote  doleful  letters  to  his  friends.  A  great  poetry  born  of 
emotion  so  baseless  there  could  hardly  be.  Typical  of  the  mood, 
alike  in  its  sincerity  and  its  weakness,  are  the  lines  which  Words- 
worth discharged  on  the  innocent  head  of  his  first  grandchild  in 
1834.  Oppressed  by  the  thought  of  what  might  lie  before  the 
infant,  he  gives  expression  to  his  fears.  He  cannot  make  up 
his  mind  whether  the  child  has  been  born  too  early  or  too  late. 
He  sees  "  ensigns  of  mimic  outrage  unfurled,"  and  he  asks — 

"  Who  shall  preserve  or  prop  the  tottering  Realm  ? 


If  to  expedience  principle  must  bow  ; 

Past,  future,  shrinking  up  beneath  the  incumbent  Now  ; 

If  cowardly  concession  still  must  feed 

The  thirst  for  power  in  men  who  ne'er  concede  ; 

Nor  turn  aside,  unless  to  shape  a  way 

For  domination  at  some  riper  day  ; 


If  office  help  the  factions  to  conspire, 

And  they  who  shoidd  extinguish,  fan  the  fire — 

Then,  will  the  sceptre  be  a  straw,  the  crown 

Sit  loosely,  like  the  thistle's  crest  of  down  ; 

To  be  blown  off  at  will,  by  Power  that  spares  it 

In  cunning  patience,  from  the  head  that  wears  it." 

and  so  on,  through  leagues  of  dreary  heroics. 

Wordsworth's  feeling  about  the  Church  was  richer  and  more 
positive,  and  lent  itself  to  a  better  poetry  than  his  feeling  about 
the  State.  It  is  interesting  to  trace  his  relations  to  the  revival 
in  the  Church  of  England  which  had  its  most  widely  known 
expression  in  the  so-called  Oxford  Movement.  Long  before 
the  Movement  was  born,  long  before  Keble  published  The 
Christian  Year,  Wordsworth  had  departed  somewhat  from  the 
ordinary  Protestant  view  current  in  his  youth,  of  the  ecclesiastical 


286  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

history  of  the  seventeenth  century.     In  1822  he  had  incurred 

censure  by  his  favourable  estimate  of  Laud.     On  the  other  hand, 

though   his    churchmanship   steadily   grew  more   definite   and 

jealous  as  years  went  on,  though  he  lived  to  declare  his  general 

sympathy  with  what  has  been  called  the  "  Catholio  Revival,"  he 

never  at  any  time  showed  the  genuine  Tractarian  anhmis.     His 

full    reverence   for  Milton  was    never   soiled    by   controversial 

prejudice.      One    compares    Keble's    recorded    impression    of 

Presbyterian  churches  with  Wordsworth's  poem,  written  in  1831,: 

On  the  Sight  of  a  Manse  in  the  South  of  Scotland — 

i 

.  /I  "  Say,  ye  far-travelled  clouds,  far-seeing  hills — 

[•    '  w^  Among  the  happiest-looking  homes  of  men 

Scattered  all  Britain  over,  through  deep  glen. 

On  airy  upland,  and  by  forest  rills. 

And  o'er  wide  plains  cheered  by  the  ark  that  trills 

His  sky-born  warblings — does  aught  meet  your  ken 

More  fit  to  animate  the  Poet's  pen, 

,^  Aught  that  more  surely  by  its  aspect  fills 

Pure  minds  with  sinless  envy,  than  the  Abode 
\  Of  the  good  Priest  :  who,  faithful  through  all  hours 

To  his  high  charge,  and  truly  serving  God 
Has  yet  a  heart  and  hand  for  trees  and  flowers, 
Enjoys  the  walks  his  predecessors  trod, 
Nor  covets  lineal  rights  in  lands  and  towers." 

Fancy  Keble  writing  such  a  poem  ! 

The  chief  poetic  monument  of  Wordsworth's  churchmanship 
is  the  long  series  of  Ecclesiastical  Sonnets^  the  greater  numbei 
of  which  were  published  as  "Ecclesiastical  Sketches  "in  1822 
though  some  were  written  earlier  and  some  later.  The  sequence 
traces  the  story  of  English  Christianity  from  its  introduction  tc 
the  "  Present  Times."  The  impulse  to  make  it  came  from  the 
sig-ht  of  a  new  church  on  the  Beaumonts'  estate  in  Leicestershire 
Much  the  same  feeling  was  stirred  in  the  poet's  mind  when  the 
Rydal  chapel  was  built  below  the  Mount  by  the  Flemings,  thai 
chapel  in  which  he  for  the  last  time  bent  the  knee  a  few  week* 
before  his  death.  At  various  points  the  sonnets  reflect  Words-' 
worth's  characteristic  attitude  in  churchmanship — the  modera- 
tion, the  Protestantism,  of  his  Anglicanism.  Here  is  nc 
aversion  from  Ridley,  Latimer,  Cranmer ;  here  is  even  the 
traditional  view  of  the  Scottish  Covenanters — 


AFTERGLOW  287 

*'  Slain  by  Compatrlot-protestants  that  draw 
From  councils  senseless  as  intolerant 
Their  warrant." 

Wordsworth's  typical  parish-priest  uses  his  authority,  neither 
.t  the  altar  nor  in  the  confessional,  but  in  the  pulpit  (No.  i8). 
rhe  sonnets  are  not  all  historical ;  some  deal  with  aspects 
►f  ritual,  baptism,  matrimony,  and  what  not.  And  they  end 
j/ith  a  fine  vision  of  the  stream  of  English  Church  history  and 
ts  goal — 

"  The  living  Waters,  less  and  less  by  guilt 
Stained  and  polluted,  brighten  as  they  roll. 
Till  they  have  reached  the  eternal  City — built 
For  the  perfected  Spirit  of  the  just !  " 

Towards  the  expression  of  the  poetry  of  his  own  neighbour- 
ood  and  of  the  Lake  country  at  large,  Wordsworth  did  much 
1  the  Rydal  days.  The  privacy  of  his  larger  demesne 
ivoured  his  chosen  method  of  composition ;  up  and  down  his 
srraces  he  would  walk,  growling,  murmuring,  booing  (as  his 
umble  neighbours  called  it)  his  lines.  Often  they  lack  inspira- 
on  of  feeling  and  felicity  of  phrase  ;  often  the  didacticism  is  too 
rominent,  the  moralizing  too  trite.  Now  and  then,  however, 
lere  is  all  that  one  could  wish  of  landscape  spiritualized. 

A  more  delightful  sonnet  sequence  than  the  Ecclesiastical 
^^onnets  is  the  series  to  the  River  Duddon^  the  stream  that  rises 
est  of  the  Langdale  Pike  region,  and  falls,  after  a  short 
Durse,  into  the  Irish  Sea.  Many  a  sight  and  sound  in  the 
.ydal  Mount  garden,  or  among  the  stately  trees  of  the  Hall ; 
lany  a  vision  of  star  hanging  over  the  trees,  or  glow-worm 
linging  to  the  rock,  yielded  its  secret  to  the  poet  as  he  grew 
Id  in  his  last  home.  Among  the  finest  of  these  later  Nature- 
oems  are  those  classed  by  him  as  Evening  Vohmiaries ;  and 
oiong  them  the  very  finest  is  the  sunset-picture,  "  Composed 
pon  an  Evening  of  Extraordinary  Splendour  and  Beauty." 
/ritten  in  1818,  it  can  in  no  sense  be  said  to  belong  to  old 
^e  ;  yet  it  expresses  what  we  recognize  as  Wordsworth's  final 
ew  of  some  of  the  mysteries  with  which  he  dealt  in  the  Iin~ 
'ortality  Ode.     In  this  aspect  it  is  very  important. 

Standing  on  his  view-point  in  front  of  the  house,  the  poet 
les   an   unparalleled  afterglow  in   the   western    heavens.     He 


288  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

reads  in  it,  not  a  conventional  vision  of  the  past,  but  an  ideal 
of  the  beyond,  of  the  future.  No  choirs  of  angels,  singing 
between  sky  and  earth,  could  be  more  moving  than  the  natural 
spectacle — 

"  This  silent  spectacle — the  gleam — 
The  shadow — and  the  peace  supreme  !  " 

Yet  there  is  more  in  the  sight  than  the  purely  natural 
there  are  agencies  at  work  more  august  than  the  purpk 
evening — 

"  From  worlds  not  quickened  by  the  sun 
A  portion  of  the  gift  is  won." 

The   hills,   climbing  towards   the    boundless   glory,   are 
parable  of  the  vision  of  old  age,  of  the  compensation,  beyonc 
life,  for  life's  pain  and  loss. 

"  Come  forth,  ye  drooping  old  men,  look  abroad, 
And  see  to  what  fair  countries  ye  are  bound  ! 
And  if  some  traveller,  weary  of  his  road, 
Hath  slept  since  noon-tide  on  the  grassy  ground, 
Ye  Genii !  to  his  covert  speed  ; 
And  wake  him  with  such  gentle  heed 
As  may  attune  his  soul  to  meet  the  dower 
Bestowed  on  this  transcendent  hour  !  " 

In  this  vision  the  poet  finds  a  restoration  of  what  he  ha 
deplored  the  loss  of  in  the  Immortality  Ode.  It  is  but  a  glean 
indeed  ;  but  it  is  the  true  lost  light.     And  so  he  prays — 

"  Dread  Power  !  whom  peace  and  calmness  serve 
No  less  than  Nature's  threatening  voice, 
If  aught  unworthy  be  my  choice. 
From  Thee  if  I  would  swerve  ; 
Oh,  let  thy  grace  remind  me  of  the  light 
Full  early  lost,  and  fruitlessly  deplored  ; 
Which,  at  this  moment,  on  my  waking  sight 
Appears  to  shine,  by  miracle  restored  ; 
My  soul,  though  yet  confined  to  earth, 
Rejoices  in  a  second  birth  !  " 

The  shade  of  difference  between  this  mood  and  that  of  tl 
last  stanza  of  the  Immo7'tality  Ode^  is  the  difference  between  tl 
earlier  and  the  later  Wordsworth,  between  the  Wordsworth 
poetic,  and  the  Wordsworth  of  religious,  faith.     Whether  t 


OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


k 


WILLI AAI    WORDSWORTH 

FROM    THE    PAINTING    BY    H.    \V.    PICKERSGILI.    IN    THE    NATIONAL    PORTRAIT    GALLERY 


AFTERGLOW  289 

liange  was  not  made  at  some  cost  of  imagination  is  open  to 
uestion.  -^^ 

A  considerable  part  of  Wordsworth's  Rydal  life  was  spent 
I  travelling.  Visits  to  London  there  frequently  were  ;  visits 
hich  brought  the  rural  poet  into  contact  with  old  friends  like 
.amb,  Coleridge,  and  Crabb  Robinson ;  fellow-craftsmen  like 
Logers,  Moore,  and  Crabbe.  There  were  tours  in  Scotland, 
Durs  on  the  Continent,  which  yielded  large  crops  of  thoughtful, 
ut  hardly  inspired,  verse. 

Fruition,  which,  in  Wordsworth's  case,  never  took  a  pecuniary 
Drm,  came  at  last  in  the  better  shape  of  fame.  In  the  course 
f  the  'thirties,  in  the  moment  of  pause  between  the  living 
enown  of  Byron,  and  the  coming  importance  of  Tennyson  and 
drowning,  England's  high  places  awoke  to  a  sense  of  Words- 
worth's rank.  Cambridge,  his  own  university,  bowed  before 
im  ;  in  1839  came  his  open  triumph  at  Oxford,  when,  amid  I 
he  thunders  of  the  Theatre,  he  received  his  Doctor's  degree.  It  ' 
3  not  difficult  to  call  up  the  strong  bony  figure  in  the  scarlet 
obe,  and  the  dignity  of  the  wrinkled  face ;  not  difficult  to  see 
Ceble  in  the  rostrum,  and  hear  the  Latin  sentences  in  which  the 
oet  of  The  Christian  Year  claimed  academic  honour  for  the 
oet  of  poverty,  philosophy,  and  religion.  Bunsen  was  there  to 
e  honoured  with  Wordsworth.  Dr.  Arnold  was  looking  on, 
laving  come  from  Rugby  for  the  day ;  Robertson  of  Brighton, 
till  an  undergraduate,  was  there,  rather  shocked,  in  his  early  . 
•  nthusiasm,  by  the  pomp  in  which  the  simple  unworldly  poet 
vas  made  to  share.  Never,  by  general  consent,  did  the  old 
vails  echo  to  more  rapturous  applause. 

A  few  years  later,  when  Southey  died  in  1843,  came  the 
-.aureateship.  At  first  Wordsworth  refused,  fearing,  in  his 
eventy- fourth  year,  the  "  duties  "  belonging  to  the  office.  But 
Dir  Robert  Peel,  the  Prime  Minister,  wrote  that  there  was  no 
mrpose  of  imposing  duties,  but  only  of  paying  "  that  tribute  of 
espect  which  is  justly  due  to  the  first  of  living  poets."  And 
le  added,  as  he  well  might,  that  there  was  no  question  as  to 
vho  should  be  selected. 

"  The  first  of  living  poets."     That,  after  all  the  vicissitudes 

)f  Wordsworth's  reputation,  was  the  national  judgment.     Yet 

jven  then  the  poetic  pause  was  at  an  end  ;  the  old  order  was 

:hanging  and  giving  place  to  new.     When  the  laurel  was  set  on 

u 


290  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

Wordsworth's  brow,  Tennyson  was  a  famous  poet ;   Browninj  r*-' 
had  published  Paracelsus  and  Strafford  and  Pippa ;  Matthev  f* 
Arnold  was  an  undergraduate  at  Oxford,  with  poetry  ready  t 
come.      Wordsworth   had    several   pleasant  meetings  with  hi;: 
successor  in  the  Laureateship,  and  he  cordially  recognized  hi  J 
achievement  and  promise.     In  1845,  when  the  old  poet  mad  t 
his  official  appearance  at  the  State  ball,  in   Rogers's  uniforr 
borrowed  for  the  occasion,  he  saw  Tennyson  several  times,  anjr; 
applied  to  him  Peel's  phrase  about  himself,  "  the  first  of  livin 
poets."      Tennyson  expressed  cordial  appreciation  of  Word* 
worth,  and  was  greatly  pleased  by  Wordsworth's  cordiality  t 
him.     He  remembered  how,  when  he  dined  in  Wordsworth 
company,  Wordsworth  said  to  him,  "  Come,  brother  bard,  t 
dinner";  and  took  his  arm.     Tennyson  gave  Wordsworth  th 
impression  that  he  was  "not  much  in  sympathy  with  what 
should  myself  most  value  in  any  attempts,  viz.  the  spiritualit 
with  which  I  have  endeavoured  to  invest  the  material  universe 
and  the  moral  relations  under  which  I  have  wished  to  exhib 
its  most  ordinary  appearances."     He  congratulated  Tennyso: 
upon  Dora^  as  being  a  success  in  a  line  which  he  had  ofte 
attempted,  but  in  which  he  had  never  succeeded. 

What  Wordsworth  knew  of  Browning's  poetry  we  cannc 
tell.  He  took  a  kindly  interest  in  Elizabeth  Barrett  and  h( 
writings;  and  when  she  and  Browning  married,  in  1846,  1: 
wrote  that  she  had  married  a  very  able  man.  And  he  adde 
sardonically,  "  Doubtless  they  will  speak  more  intelligibly  1 
each  other  than  they  have  yet  done  to  the  public.'* 

As  the  growing  light  of  fame  fell  on  Wordsworth,  a  shado 
came  on  his  home  life.  Dorothy's  companionship,  which,  sine 
his  childhood,  had  been  the  giain  human  influence  in  his  lif 
was  withdrawn  from  him,  gradually,  but  steadily.  At  the  ag 
of  fifty-six  she  had  a  serious  illness,  while  she  was  keeping  hou 
for  her  nephew,  John  Wordsworth,  at  Whitwick,  near  Lougl 
borough  and  Coleorton  ;  and  she  never  properly  recovered  fro 
it.  In  1832  her  brother  was  writing,  "Coleridge  and  m 
beloved  sister  are  the  two  beings  to  whom  my  intellect  is  mo 
indebted,  and  they  are  now  proceeding,  as  it  were,  pari  pass 
along  the  path  of  sickness  ;  I  will  not  say  towards  the  grav  ^ 
but  I  trust  towards  a  blessed  immortality."  Dorothy's  life  w< 
prolonged  beyond  the  limits  of  her  brother's  ;  but  never  agari 


AFTERGLOW  291 

/as  she  able  to  quit  the  "  path  of  sickness."  She  dropped,  very 
radually  and  gently,  but  very  steadily,  into  that  saddest  valley 
f  the  shadow,  where  life  ebbs  with  maimed  intelligence.  Her 
ecline  was  hastened  by  the  death,  in  1835,  of  Mrs.  Wordsworth's 
ister,  Sarah  Hutchinson,  who  had  been  for  a  long  time  a 
teloved  member  of  the  family.  She  retained  her  general 
itelligence,  her  literary  task,  and  literary  memory ;  but  of  the 
resent  she  took  no  heed.  The  radiant,  eager  Dorothy !  She 
3  clearly  remembered  still,  wheeled  about  the  garden  at  the 
ILount,  and  scattering,  as  in  better  days,  nods  and  smiles  on 
hose  she  knew  and  loved. 

Dorothy's  fate  saddened  Wordsworth's  afterglow;  but  his 
/ere  the  "years  that  bring  the  philosophic  mind,"  his  was  a 
ranquillity  of  resignation,  a  "  calm  of  mind,  all  passion  spent," 
/hich  made  such  sorrow  a  fortification,  not  a  weakening  or 
verthrow.  And  there  was  much  to  compensate  :  happy  family- 
fe,  with  patriarchal  satisfaction  ;  deep  friendships ;  the  sense  of 
low,  well-earned  fame,  bringing  modest  admirers  to  look  on 
heir  poet  face  to  face. 

It  is  a   pleasant   picture  that  Sir  John  Taylor   Coleridge, 
ephew  of  the  poet,  and  father  of  the  Lord  Chief  Justice  of  the 
ature,  gives  of  the  Wordsworths  as  he  saw  them  in  1836,  and  it 
lay  be  taken  as  fairly  representative  of  their  aspect  at  that 
eriod.     Coleridge  was  with  his  family  at  Fox  How,  lent  by 
le  Arnolds  for  six  weeks ;  and  the  Rydal  Mount  people  were 
leir  only  neighbours.     In  the  mornings  Wordsworth  was  busy 
dth  the  proofs  of  the  first  six-volume  edition  of  his  complete 
oems  ;  in  the  afternoons  he  was  ready  for  long  walks.     Cole- 
dge  tells  us  how  delightful  these  walks  were  made  by  the 
oet's  talk — by  its  raciness  of  the  soil,  its  evidence  of  minute 
atural   and    local  observation,   of   insight   into   character,   of 
empathy  with  the  homeliest  types.     He  was  struck  by  Words- 
l^orth's  interest  in  landscape-gardening.     He  describes  a  little 
jcene  in  the  grounds  of  Rydal  Mount.     He  found  Wordsworth 
b  anxious  dialogue  with  his  gardener.     "James  and  I,"  said  he, 
are  in  a  puzzle  here.     The  grass  here  has  spots  which  offend 
tie  eye  ;  and  I  told  him  we  must  cover  them  with  soap-lees. 
That,*  he  says  *will  make  the  green  there  darker  than  the 
est.'    *  Then,'  I  said,  ^  we  must  cover  the  whole.'    He  objected  : 
That  will  not  do  with  reference  to  the  little  lawn  to  which  you 


292  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS  CIRCLE 

pass  from  this/     'Cover  that/   I  said.      To  which  he  reph'esi^' 
*You    will    have    an    unpleasant    contrast    with    the    foliag 


surrounding  it. 


t 


Wordsworth  was  always  ready  to  talk  of  poetry,  includinj 
his  own ;  though  as  to  the  latter  it  seemed  to  Coleridge  that  h 
showed  no  forwardness.    He  let  his  companion  into  some  of  th 
secrets  of  his  "  diction  "  ;  telling  him  how  his  narrative  poem 
were  all  founded  on  fact ;  how,  when  his  stories  were  acquirelhe 
by  hearsay,  he  used  in  his  poems  the  very  words  which  they  wer  t 
told,  "  dropping  all  vulgarisms  and  provincialisms."    He  showe 
abundantly  his  extreme  verbal  and  metrical  fastidiousness ;  an 
blamed  his  constant  analysis  of,  and  theorizing  about,  emotiorti:; 
for  some  injury  of  which  he  was  conscious  to  his  aesthetic  sensip 
bility  and  poetical  power. 

But  more  than   any   literary  criticism,  Coleridge   admire 
Wordsworth's  gracious    personality ;    his    kindly,   sympatheti  x 
ways  with  his  humbler  neighbours  ;  his  fine,  sturdy  pedestrianisn 
as  he  "trudged"  along  (Coleridge  chose  the  word  because 
seemed   to  express  the  ''boldness"  of  his  gait)   in   his  plaiji 
jacket  and  waistcoat,  with  the  too  frequent  green  shade  over  hi 
unhappy  eyes.     When  they  parted,  Coleridge  was  able  to  sa 
that  the  more  he  saw  of  Wordsworth,  the  more  he  admired  hir 
as  a  poet  and  as  a  man. 

Wordsworth's  two  sons,  his  eldest  and  youngest  child,  Joh 
the  clergyman,  and  William,  his  father's  successor  in  the  Con 
missionership,  both  married  happily  in  their  father's  lifetim<i 
and  their  wives  and  children  added  to  the  poet's  happines 
But  his  heart  was  most  garnered  up  with  his  one  daughte 
Dora.  Born  in  1804,  Dora  had  her  ripening  girlhood  during  th 
early  time  at  Rydal,  and  she  remained  in  the  nest  until  184 
She  grew  up  into  a  slender  graceful  woman,  with  much  of  h( 
mother  in  her,  and  especially  her  mother's  candid  trust-inspirin 
eyes.  In  1841,  when  she  was  thirty-seven,  she  made  a  marriag, 
which  was  full  of  promise.  Twenty  years  before,  there  had  com 
to  live  in  the  neighbourhood  a  very  interesting  man  name§s: 
Edward  Quillinan.  His  father  was  a  merchant  trading  wit 
Portugal,  and  Edward  was  born  at  Oporto.  His  father's  con 
mercial  career  was  interrupted  by  the  French  invasion  of  tb  k 
Peninsula  ;  and  Edward  entered  the  army,  seeing  a  good  de;i 
of  service  here  and  there  in  the  pre-Waterloo  days.     In  18 17  I 


AFTERGLOW  293 

arried  a  Miss  Bryder,  the  daughter  of  a  baronet.     In  spite  of 

s  mercantile  and  military  pre-occupations,  Quillinan  was  a 

an  of  literary  sympathy  and  ability  ;  and  he  had  been  a  reader 

id  admirer  of  Wordsworth  while  Wordsworth's  reputation  hung 

the  balance.     Quartered  in  Penrith  in  1820,  he  rejoiced  in  his 

harness   to   the   poet ;   and,  when  he  left  the  service  in  the 

llowing  year,   he   settled   close  to  him — at  Rydal   Cottage. 

here,  in  1822,  his  wife  was  burned  to  death,  leaving  him  with 

vo  daughters,  of  whom  the  younger,  Rotha, — called  after  the 

veet  river  of  Grasmere  and  Rydal  lakes — was  Wordsworth*s 

od-child.      Soon  after,  the  widower  went  to  Kent ;   but  the 

iendship  with  the  Wordsworths  suffered  no  check ;  there  were 

iterchanges  of  visits,  and  there  was  much  literary  sympathy. 

Juillinan  wrote  poetry  as  well  as  prose  ;  and  he  used  his  skill 

1  Portuguese  to  translate  the  Lusiads  of  Camoens.     In  1841  he 

Dok  Dora  Wordsworth  as  his  second  wife.     Wordsworth  greatly 

alued  Ouillinan's  friendship,  but  he  disliked  the  idea  of  the 

larriage,  partly,  perhaps,  because  Quillinan,  brought  up  a  Roman 

atholic,  had  never  formally  renounced  his  faith.     But  the  chief 

Dstacle  was  his  jealous  affection  for  his  daughter,  that  kind  of 

ppropriating,  clinging  affection,  by  which  many  a  father  has 

polled  a  daughter's  life  before  and  since.     All  the  same,  the 

larriage  took  place  ;  and  the  omens  were  fair.     The  Quillinans 

lad  no  children,  and  they  were  able  to  be  a  good  deal  at  Rydal 

idount,  so  that  the  pain  of  separation  was  lessened.     They  spent 

'ne  winter  at  Ambleside ;  and  they  were  a  good  deal  at  the 

large  square  house  on  Belle  Isle,  Windermere,  which  he  who 

rosses  the  lake  by  the  ferry  can  see  looking  out  at  him  from 

ihe  trees.     But  Dora's  health  began  to  give  way ;  a  winter  in 

r'ortugal  was  tried,  about  which  Dora  wrote  books  :  A  Jotirnal 

]f  a  Few  Months^  Residence  i7t  Portugal^  and  Glimpses  of  the  South 

/  Spain.     She  wrote  them  at  Loughrigg  Holme,  quite  close  to 

.lydal,  where  she  and  her  husband  seemed  at  last  to  have  found 

I  settled  home,  where  both  could  follow  their  literary  pursuits  in 

)eace,  under  the  patriarchal  shadow  of  the  Mount.     But  death 

vas  inexorable,  and  claimed  her  in  the  high  summer  of  1847, 

vhen  she  had  been  just  a  year  at  the  Holme.     We  can  imagine 

vhat  the  blow  must  have  been  to  the  old  man  of  seventy-seven. 

^e  wrote  no  verse  about  it ;  and  his  utterance  in  letters  has  the 

estraint  we  should  expect.     To  one  friend  he  wrote  :  "  We  bear 


294  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS  CIRCLE 

up  under  our  affliction  as  well  as  God  enables  us  to  do."  An( 
to  another :  "  Our  sorrow,  I  feel,  is  for  life ;  but  God's  will  bt 
done !  "  When,  less  than  three  years  later,  the  poet  was  on  th< 
brink  of  the  River,  his  wife  said  to  him :  "  William,  you  an 
going  to  Dora."  Woke  one  morning  by  the  entrance  of  one  o 
his  nieces,  he  said,  "  Is  that  Dora  ?  "  And,  when  all  was  over 
Mrs.  Wordsworth  went  to  Dorothy  and  said  :  "  Dear,  he  ha 
gone  to  Dora." 

Wordsworth  never  suffered  the  vulgar  inquisitiveness  whict 
pestered  Tennyson  at  Farringford.  Pilgrims  were  many,  indeed 
but  they  were  reverent ;  and  Wordsworth,  unlike  Tennyson 
mostly  enjoyed  their  visits.  His  circle  in  the  latter  days  a1 
Rydal  Mount  was  large  enough,  and  distinguished  enough,  to  dc 
him  ample  honour.  For  the  most  part  it  was  very  different  frorr 
the  earlier  one.  The  old  familiar  faces  were  mostly  gone.  A 
in  an  august  funeral  procession  they  pass  before  us  in  the 
Extempore  Effusion  on  the  Death  of  James  Hogg, 

One  familiar  face  remained  to  the  end,  and  beyond  it 
Wordsworth's  son,  writing  by  his  father's  dead  body,  called 
Samuel  Rogers,  his  father's  "  oldest,  perhaps,  living  friend." 
Rogers  holds  a  curious  place  in  English  literature.  Born  in 
1763,  and  living  until  1855,  he  spanned  nearly  a  century,  a 
century  of  portentous  literary  change.  Twenty,  or  thereabouts, 
when  Johnson  died  and  Cowper  published  his  Task^  he  was  past 
thirty  when  Keats  was  born,  and  alive  when  Tennyson  had 
been  Poet  Laureate  for  five  years.  He  produced  poems — The 
Pleasures  of  Memory  in  1792,  and  Italy  in  1822  to  1828— poems 
of  pensive  reminiscence  and  well-bred  description — of  which 
everybody  has  heard,  and  everybody  in  the  future  probably  will 
hear,  the  names  ;  but  which  no  mere  lover  of  poetry  probably 
will  ever  read.  No  one,  even  in  his  own  day,  thought  of  putting 
Rogers  among  the  great  poets ;  yet  he  might  have  been  Poet 
Laureate  at  almost  any  period  of  his  life,  and  he  held  a  kind  of 
respected  mastership  among  all  the  poets.  This  was  partly  due 
to  his  Maecenas-like  qualities ;  to  his  hospitable  sympathy  with 
men  of  letters ;  to  his  wealth  and  splendid  house  in  St.  James's 
Place,  where  great  men  met  at  sumptuous  breakfasts,  and  heard 
the  good  stories  and  small-voiced  epigrams — not  always  good- 
natured — of  the  caustic  little  man.  A  bald  head  and  wrinkled 
face,  cadaverous  in  its  paleness,  and  blue  eyes  which  Carlyle 


DORA  WORDSWORTH  (MRS.   QUILLINAN 

BY   MARGARET   GILLIES 


I' 


t: 


AFTERGLOW  295 

ailed  both  "  sorrowful "  and  "  cruel,"  is  shown  in  the  pictures 
f  Rogers.  But  if  there  was  cruelty  in  his  nature,  and  if  it 
poke  out  at  times  in  his  talk,  there  went  with  it  enough 
indness  to  make  him  famous  as  a  good  friend  and  a  good 
lan. 

Rogers  and  Wordsworth  first  met  at  Grasmere  in  1803,  just 

efore  the  first  Scottish  expedition.    When  Wordsworth,  Dorothy 

nd  Coleridge  set  out  Rogers  followed  them,  and  they  were 

Dgether   at   Dumfries.      Thenceforward    the   friendship   stood 

teady,  founded  on  genuine  mutual  respect.      Rogers  turned 

ip  at  the  Lakes  occasionally ;  and  Wordsworth,  when  in  town, 

/as  always  a  welcome  guest  in  St.  James's  Place.     Rogers  once 

ntroduced  him  to  Charles  James  Fox.     He  was  always  willing 

o  mediate  between  authors  and  publishers  ;   and  he  helped 

A/'ordsworth  about  the  production  of  The  Excursion^  and  others 

f  his  poems,  and  advised  Dorothy  as  to  the  printing  of  her 

ournal  of  the   1803  Scotch  tour.      Wordsworth  gave  wooden 

commendation   of  Italy,   and   dwelt    on   his   daughter   Dora's 

ippreciation  of  it.     In   1848,  after  Dora's  death,  the  affection 

)f  the  two  old  men — Roger  was  eighty-five — found  beautiful 

expression.     Wordsworth    closed    a    letter    to   Rogers    thus : 

*  Believe  me,  my  friend  of  nearly  half  a  century,  very  affection- 

itely  yours,"  a  strong  phrase  from  him  ;   and   Rogers,  in  his 

reply,   exclaimed :    "  What    delightful    days    have    we    passed 

together,   walking   and   sitting   wherever   we   were,   and   more 

especially   among   the   rocks   and  waters   of  your  enchanting 

country.     Oh  that  they  were  to  come  over  again !     You  may 

well  conceive  how  much  you  were  in  my  mind  during  your  long, 

long  trial.     Pray  remember  me  to  those  who  remain  with  you, 

her  [Dora's]  dear,  dear  mother  and  aunt,  and  pray  believe  me  to 

be  your  grateful  and  affectionate  friend." 

Another  link  with  the  early  days  long  remained  in  poor 
Hartley  Coleridge,  Coleridge's  eldest  son,  and  too  like  his  father 
in  inconstancy  of  purpose,  and  inability  to  achieve  results.  We 
remember  him  in  1807,  when  he  was  eleven,  scampering  down- 
hill when  De  Quincey  escorted  his  mother  to  Dove  Cottage, 
and  rushing  in  first  to  greet  the  occupants.  He  was  always 
a  pet  of  Wordsworth's.  When  he  was  six  years  old  he  had 
inspired  Wordsworth  to  write  one  of  the  most  exquisite  lays  of 
childhood  in  existence. 


296  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

*'  O  Thou  !  whose  fancies  from  afar  are  brought  ; 
Who  of  thy  words  Jost  make  a  mock  apparel, 
And  fittest  to  unutterable  thought 
The  breeze-like  motion  and  the  self-born  carol  ; 
Thou  faery  voyager  !  that  dost  float 
In  such  clear  water,  that  thy  boat 
May  rather  seem 

To  brood  on  air  than  on  an  earthly  stream  ; 
Suspended  in  a  stream  as  clear  as  sky, 
Where  earth  and  heaven  do  make  one  imagery,"  etc. 


toa: 
^■■ 

li:: 


s: 


With  so  wretched  a  home,  and  so  unhappy  a  parentage  on  f 
the  paternal  side,  the  boy  needed  outside  guardians  and  helpers.  ^^• 
Southey  did  much  for  him.    When  he  was  seventeen,  Wordsworth  '^^  - 
wrote  to  that  incarnation  of  benevolence,  Thomas  Poole,  to  ask  i- 
for  his  advice  in  Hartley's  behalf.     It  was  not  easy,  he  said,  to 
determine  what  the  youth  was  fit  for  ;  his  talents  were  con- 
siderable;  his  knowledge  was  patchy.     Poole,  of  course,  wasi 
ready,  not  only  with  advice,   but  with  money  ;    and   at   last, 
Hartley  went  up  to  Oxford,  where  he  got  a  Postmastership  at 
Merton.     His  talents  stood  him  in  good  stead  at  Oxford ;  for, 
in    1 8 19,  he  obtained  one  of  the   Oriel  Fellowships,  which  in 
those  days  were  Oxford's  greatest  prizes.     But  what  was  the 
good  of  it  ?     He  was  "  irregular  "  ;  and  one  of  his  irregularities 
was  intemperance.     Altogether,  he  was  too  irregular  for  Oriel ; 
and  he  never  got  beyond  the  probationary  year  of  his  Fellow- 
ship.    Wordsworth  said  that  his  father's  aspiration  for  him  had 
been  too  literally  fulfilled — 

*'  But  thou,  my  child,  shalt  wander  like  a  breeze." 

Like  a  breeze,  indeed,  the  poor  little  creature — "  lile  Hartley," 
as  he  was  fondly  called  at  the  Lakes — wandered  for  the  rest 
of  his  life.  A  little  journalism  in  London  ;  brief  spasms  of 
schoolmastering  at  Ambleside  and  Sedbergh ;  the  writing 
of  some  poetry,  too  beautiful  to  be  wholly  fugitive,  and,  latterly, 
years  of  desultory  poetizing  and  pedestrianism  in  the  Lake 
country,  radiating  from  that  Nab  Cottage  between  Rydal  and 
Grasmere  whence  De  Ouincey  took  his  wife.  In  the  'forties 
"lile  Hartley,"  with  his  squat  figure,  dark  eyes,  and  bright 
merry  face  was  as  familiar  about  the  haunted  paths  as  the 
stately  Wordsworth,  and,  by  the  rustics  at  least,  more  loved. 
For  "  lile   Hartley "  was  always  in   the  mood    for   a   friendly 


AFTERGLOW  297 

alutation  ;  and  his  queer,  uncertain  gait,  his  ways  with  his 
walking-stick,  his  hurryings  and  stoppings,  made  him  a  lovable 
ccentric.  Wordsworth,  on  the  other  hand — so  it  was  reported 
y  one  of  the  rustics — would  pass  you  "  as  if  you  was  nobbut  a 
toan  "  ;  and  he  was  chary  of  greetings  to  children.  From  so 
ear  a  fellow  as  Hartley  even  poetry  could  he  endured,  thought 
he  Westmorland  rustics  ;  but  Mr.  Wordsworth,  ** booing"  and 
lurmuring  his  lines,  his  lips  going  upon  the  road,  though  he 
light  be  "cleverish,"  what  was  the  good  of  him  if  he  wouldn't 
ive  you  the  time  of  day,  and  look  as  if  he  enjoyed  himself? 
ndeed,  it  was  darkly  hinted  by  the  rustic  mind  that  Hartley 
d  most  of  Wordsworth's  poetry  for  him.  There  was,  at  any 
ate,  much  trafficking  between  the  Mount  and  the  Nab  ;  Hartley 
orrowed  Mr.  Wordsworth's  books  ;  and  Mr.i Wordsworth  would 
ften  look  in  at  the  Nab  of  an  afternoon ;  there  would  be  long 
ilks ;  and  then  the  two  would  come  out,  arm-in-arm,  and  pace 
ack  to  Rydal  together. 

The  rustics  might  be  wrong  in  the  inferences  they  drew 
:om  the  intimacy  of  the  two  men ;  but  they  were  not  wrong 

to  the  fact.  Much  of  the  admiring,  anxious,  affectionate 
olicitude  which  Wordsworth  had  felt  for  S.  T.  Coleridge  was 
estowed  on  his  not  dissimilar  son.  And  Wordsworth  was  to 
utlive  the  son  as  he  had  outlived  the  father,  as  he  had  outlived 
early  all  his  contemporaries.  Poor  Hartley  died  in  1849,  the 
ear  before  Wordsworth's  death.  The  rustics  noticed  that  Mr. 
Vordsworth  paid  "  lile  Hartley "  a  daily  visit  while  he  lay  on 
is  deathbed,  and  they  reported  that  he  "took  communion  wi' 
im  at  the  last."  Wordsworth  was  not  with  him  at  the  moment 
f  his  passing ;  but  when  he  heard  that  he  was  gone,  he  said 

Derwent  Coleridge,  his  brother,  "Let  him  lie  by  us — he 
^ould  have  wished  it."  And  the  next  day  the  two  men  went 
3  Grasmere  churchyard,  and  a  solemn  little  scene  was  transacted. 
Vordsworth  bade  the  sexton  measure  out  his  own  and  his  wife's 
rave,  and  then  another,  behind,  for  Hartley  Coleridge.  "  When 
lifted  up  my  eyes  from  my  daughter's  grave,"  Wordsworth 
aid,  "he  was  standing  there!"  Then  he  turned  to  the  sexton 
nd  said,  "  Keep  the  ground  for  us,  we  are  old  people,  and  it 
annot  be  for  long." 

Harriet  Martineau,  who  wrote  harshly  about  both  Words- 
iTorth  and  Hartley  Coleridge,  wrote  gently  about  the  last  of 


298  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

Hartley.  "  I  witnessed  his  funeral,"  she  wrote,  "  and,  as  I  saw 
his  grey-headed  old  friend  bending  over  his  grave  that  winterjisi: 
morning,  I  felt  that  the  aged  mourner  might  well  enjoy  such 
support  as  could  arise  from  a  sense  of  duty  faithfully  performed  fc 
to  the  being  who  was  too  weak  for  the  conflicts  of  life."  And  j. 
again,  "  When  nothing  more  than  pity  and  help  was  possible, 
Wordsworth  treated  [Hartley]  as  gently  as  if  he  had  been  (what 
indeed  he  was  in  our  eyes)  a  sick  child." 

The  social  side  of  Wordsworth's  later  years  was  chieflyjun 
determined  by  some  strong  friendships,  and  by  certain  felicitieS|  jl: 
of  neighbourhood,  which  brought  the  Arnolds  to  Fox  How ; 
Mrs.  Fletcher  and  her  family  to  Lancrigg ;  and  Harriett 
Martineau  to  the  outskirts  of  Ambleside.  Then  there  were  i 
the  many  pilgrimages  of  admirers,  and  meetings,  here  andfc: 
there,  with  younger  men  of  letters. 

Wordsworth  was  the  worst  of  correspondents.  He  had  V 
always  disliked  the  act  of  writing ;  and  the  frequent  attacks  of 
inflammation  of  the  eyes  from  which  he  suffered,  latterly  with 
increasing  frequency,  added  real  disability  to  distaste.  Yet  to 
the  very  last  he  would  not  suffer  any  friendships  to  die  for 
want  of  epistolary  nutriment. 

One  of  the  most  substantial  of  his  later  friendships  was  with 
William  Rowan  Hamilton,  the  great  Irish  mathematician,  who, 
invented  "  quaternions."  Hamilton  was  one  of  those  men  of 
supreme  mathematical  genius  who  disprove  the  vulgar  notion- 
of  the  isolation  of  mathematics  among  the  affairs  of  the  mind 
and  spirit  He  loved  poetry,  and  longed  to  be  a  poet.  When 
he  was  young,  he  and  his  sister  were  constantly  writing  verses  and 
sending  them  to  Wordsworth  for  criticism.  Wordsworth  was, 
by  no  means  indifferent  to  mathematics.  He  was  educated  at 
a  college  pre-eminent  in  mathematics.  All  his  readers  know; 
how,  as  he  lay  in  bed  in  his  rooms  at  John's,  he  could  see  much 
of  Trinity,  even — 

"  The  antechapel  where  the  statue  stood 
Of  Newton  with  his  prism  and  silent  face. 
The  marble  index  of  a  mind  for  ever 
Voyaging  through  strange  seas  of  thought,  alone." 

In  another  part  of  T/ie  Prelude  he  narrates  how  to  him,  in: 
his  student  days,  "  poetry  and  geometric  truth  "  seemed  between 


AFTERGLOW  299 

hem  to  possess  a  monopoly  of  immortality  and  exemption  from 
lisease.  Still,  it  was  poetry  rather  than  mathematics  that 
Hamilton  and  Wordsworth  conferred  and  corresponded  about, 
rhey  met  first  in  September  1827,  when  Hamilton,  aged  twenty- 
wo,  was  visiting  the  Lake  country,  and  a  very  real  friendship 
iras  cemented  in  spite  of  the  inequality  in  age.  The  two  men 
lad  a  wonderful  midnight  walk  in  which — as  Hamilton's 
)iographer  puts  it  —  they  ''  oscillated  between  Rydal  and 
Vmbleside,  absorbed  in  converse  on  high  themes,  finding  it 
ilmost  impossible  to  part." 

In  1829  Wordsworth  visited  the  Hamiltons  at  Dunsink,  to 
heir  great  joy.  Hamilton  was  now  Irish  Astronomer-Royal  ; 
ind  Wordsworth  stayed  at  the  Observatory.  Mrs.  Hamilton 
las  recorded  her  impression.  She  "  saw,  approaching  the  house, 
I  tall  man,  with  grey  hair,  a  brown  coat,  and  nankeen  trousers," 
ooking  as  unlike  her  preconceptions  as  possible — 

"  And  is  this  Wordsworth  ?  this  the  man 
Of  whom  my  fancy  cherished, 
So  faithfully  a  waking  dream 
An  image  that  hath  perished." 

3o  she  parodied  inwardly,  as  she  watched  her  realized  ideal  at 
unch.  She  saw,  in  the  first  place,  great  reserve  ;  then  she  saw 
rusticity,  simplicity,  and  dignity ;  none  of  which  qualities, 
ipparently,  had  formed  part  of  her  conventional  idea  of  a  poet.  - 
And  she  added  what  we  can  well  believe  to  show  deep  insight : 
other  men  did  not  seem  necessary  to  him.  His  intellectual  and 
moral  loftiness  struck  her  so  much  that  she  could  no  longer 
think  any  of  his  poetry  "  silly."  What  she  had  thought  silliness 
was  but  the  stooping  of  a  great  nature,  to  which  nothing  was 
common  or  unclean.  He  seemed  to  her  " sublime"  ;  and,  when 
he  was  still  only  fifty-nine,  "  a  divine  old  man." 

Next  year  Hamilton  stayed  three  weeks  at  Rydal  Mount ; 
and  correspondence,  about  poetry,  science,  and  politics,  went  on 
at  intervals  throughout  the  poet's  life.  There  was  an  interesting 
time  in  1844,  when  Hamilton  was  staying  with  R.  P.  Graves  at 
(Windermere,  another  guest  being  Archer  Butler.  Julius  Hare 
was  staying  at  Fox  How ;  and  Graves  had  Wordsworth, 
Hare,  and  Edward  Quillinan  to  meet  Hamilton  and  Butler. 
'  Before  he  left  the  Lakes  on  that  occasion,  Hamilton  celebrated 


300  WORDSWORTH   AND    HIS   CIRCLE 

his  relations  with  Wordsworth  by  writing  an  impromptu  sonnet  i 
in  Dora's  album  at  Rydal  Mount,  in  which  he  described  the  lie-? 
change  from  the  "unquiet  transport "  of  a  mere  disciple  to  the 
"  calmer  joy  "  of  a  friend.    In  1846,  through  Hamilton's  influence,  ¥ 
Wordsworth  was  made  an  Honorary  Member  of  the  Royal  Irish  i«^ 
Academy. 

Another  stimulating  and  enlarging  correspondence  was  with  W''' 
the  American  Henry  Reed,  Professor  at  Philadelphia,  though  nc' 
the  two  men  never  saw  each   other  in   the  flesh.     Reed  was 
Wordsworth's  American  editor,  and  they  corresponded  much 
on  international  copyright  and  other  themes.     It  was  a  goodjtiir 
thing  for  so  insular  an  Englishman  as  Wordsworth  to  have  a 
transatlantic    correspondent.     There   was    not    much    in    the  \rd 
"  Great  Republic"  to  attract  one  who  believed  that  the  English 
Constitution,   before    the   Whigs    began   to   desecrate   it,  was 
perfect ;  but  Wordsworth  did  admit  to  Reed  that  he  had  as 
little  or  less  faith  in  absolute  despotism.     Nay,  in  1843,  he  did 
not  "conceal  that,  as  far  as  the  people  are  capable  of  governing 
themselves,  he  was  a  Democrat." 

In  the  last  summer  of  his  life  Wordsworth  received  a  friend 
of  the  Professor,  Mr.  Ellis  Yarnall,  of  Philadelphia,  who  has 
left  a  record  of  his  impressions.  He  walked  from  Ambleside  to 
the  Mount,  feeling,  much  as  De  Quincey  had  felt  in  1807,  that 
"  after  long  years  of  waiting,  of  distant  reverential  admiration 
and  love,"  he  was  about  to  see  a  man  who  had  so  thrilled  him 
across  the  ocean  with  the  power  of  his  words.  He  arrived  at 
the  early  dinner-hour,  and  Wordsworth  left  the  table  to  receive 
him  at  the  door.  "  It  could  be  no  other — a  tall  figure,  a  little 
bent  with  age,  his  hair  thin  and  grey,  and  his  face  deeply 
wrinkled.  The  expression  of  his  countenance  was  sad,  mournful 
I  might  say ;  he  seemed  one  on  whom  sorrow  pressed  heavily." 
He  insisted  that  Mr.  Yarnall  should  join  them  at  their  meal  in 
the  little  dining-room  ;  Mrs.  Wordsworth  was  there,  with  three 
grandchildren.  They  talked  of  American  affairs  ;  Mrs.  Words- 
worth going  on  with  her  knitting  after  dinner.  It  was  the  year 
of  the  Californian  gold-fever ;  but  Mr.  Yarnall  was  tactful 
enough  to  speak  of  American  progress  only  in  so  far  as  it  meant 
an  extension  of  the  English  tongue.  Wordsworth  looked  up  at 
this,  with  "  a  fixing  of  his  eye  as  if  on  some  remote  object,"  and 
remarked  that  it  behoved  those  who  wrote   to  see  to  it,  that 


r.' 


AFTERGLOW  801 

/hat  they  uttered  was  on  the  side  of  virtue.  Of  Henry  VIII. 
le  spoke  to  his  guest  with  positive  loathing.  The  subsequent 
onversation  ranged  widely.  They  spoke  of  France,  just  through 
he  '48  upheaval.  He  recalled  his  youth  there  among  the 
cenes  of  the  great  Revolution,  and  said,  "  I  should  like  to 
;pend  another  month  in  France  before  I  close  my  eyes."  They 
poke  of  Modern  Painters,  the  two  first  volumes  of  which  were 
low  before  the  world.  Wordsworth  thought  Ruskin  a  brilliant 
vriter,  but  regretted  his  too  exclusive  partisanship  of  Turner, 
rhey  spoke  of  the  "Oxford  Movement,"  which  had  by  this 
:ime  more  than  run  its  early  course.  Wordsworth  registered 
lis  definite  approval.  "  I  foresaw,"  said  he,  "  that  the  movement 
vas  for  good,  and  such  I  conceive  it  has  been  beyond  all 
question." 

Mr.  Yarnall  noticed  the  quality  of  Wordsworth's  talk  ;  how 
:hoice  his  words  were ;  how  faultless  seemed  each  sentence. 
When  he  was  with  him  in  the  open  air,  he  marked,  as  others  did, 
the  poet's  habit  of  stopping  frequently  to  emphasize  something 
he  was  saying,  and  again  and  again  he  saw  the  far-away  look 
in  the  eyes,  and  the  fire  of  genius  unquenched  by  nearly  eighty 
years.  Wordsworth  was  evidently  feeling  his  age  ;  he  wistfully 
asked  what  age  men  reached  in  America }  They  went  to  see 
the  Rydal  waterfall  before  they  parted  on  the  Ambleside  road. 
As  they  walked,  Wordsworth  gave  to  a  beggar — the  fifth  or 
sixth,  he  said,  to  whom  he  had  given  that  day.  Mr.  Yarnall 
eft  him,  he  reported  to  Reed,  ''in  a  tumult  of  excitement." 
He  felt  that  a  great  man,  great  morally,  and  great  intellectually, 
had  passed  from  his  sight — a  man  who  seemed  "  living  as  if  in 
the  presence  of  God  by  habitual  recollection." 

As  early  as  1841,  Wordsworth  was  introduced  to  Emerson's 
writings,  but  they  had  no  message  for  him.  He  could  not  away 
with  the  style,  and  wrote  sarcastically  to  Reed  about  "a 
language  which  he  (Emerson)  supposed  to  be  English."  Yet 
Emerson  had  made  a  pious  pilgrimage  to  Rydal  in  1833,  and 
had  a  long  talk  with  Wordsworth,  in  which  apparently  there 
was  not  much  love  lost.  Emerson's  anwms  is  very  different 
from  Mr.  Yarnall's.  He  described  Wordsworth  as  "a  plain, 
elderly,  white-haired  man,  not  prepossessing,  and  disfigured  by 
green  goggles,  called  in  by  his  daughters  \sicy  The  bulk  of  the 
conversation  naturally  was  on  American  affairs ;   and  though 


ic- 


302  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS  CIRCLE 

Emerson  only  reports  Wordsworth's  remarks,  he  does  so  with 
a  scornful  mnuendo  which  cannot  be  mistaken.     Wordsworth 
unfortunately,  took  the  lead  in  transatlantic  criticism ;  and  (it  ^■' 
was  the  year  after  the  Reform  Bill)  was  in  his  most  dolefully  ^- 
didactic  vein.     In  his   literary   criticism,   as    Emerson   reports^ 
him,  he  did  not  get  beyond  wooden  platitudes,  and  denuncia- 
tions born   of  imperfect  knowledge  and  insight.     He  thought 
Carlyle,  though  clever  and  deep,  sometimes  insane.     He  was"^ 
so  disgusted   with  the  first  part  of   Wilhelm  Meister   that  he  i^-'" 
threw  the  book  across  the  room.     He  had  always  wished  that  •?: 
Mr.  Coleridge  would  write  more  to  be  understood,  etc.    Emerson 
admitted  Wordsworth's  kindness  and  courtesy,  his  truthfulnessl^^ 
and  modesty.     But  he  found  "  hard  limits  "  to  his  thought ;  he  \'- 
"  made  the  impression  of  a  narrow  and  very  English  mind  ;  of- 
one  who  paid  for  his  rare  elevation  by  general  tameness  andf- 
conformity."     One  may  resent  the  animus  of  all  this  ;  but  onef- 
recognizes  the  truth  in  it. 

The  fact  is  that  Emerson  and  Wordsworth  stood  too  neaf 
each  other,  and  yet  had  too  sharp  differences  of  method  and  ^' 
medium  to  realize  their  spiritual  kinship.  Carlyle,  who  was 
wanting  in  Emerson's  suavity  and  tolerance,  was  even  more 
inappreciative  of  Wordsworth.  Wordsworth  thought  of  Carlyle 
as  merely  a  clever  and  rather  dangerous  man  who  did  not  know 
how  to  write  English.  Carlyle  thought  of  Wordsworth  as  an 
overpraised  literary  lion  with  a  very  feeble  roar.  He  saw  him 
occasionally  in  London,  early  in  the  'forties,  when  the  poet's 
living  reputation  was  at  its  highest ;  and  he  recalled  his 
memories  in  the  miserable  early  days  of  his  widowerhood,  when 
the  heavens  above  him  were  as  brass,  and  all  his  life  seemed) 
vanity  and  a  striving  after  wind.  What  he  has  to  say  of 
Wordsworth  is  unsympathetic,  and  therefore,  in  a  sense,  value- 
less as  criticism  ;  yet  the  shrewdness  of  his  insight  and  his 
inimitable  power  of  expression  give  it  the  value  of  partial 
truth.  Even  the  most  reverent  Wordsworthian  may  allow  ■ 
himself  the  sly  enjoyment  of  this :  "  A  man  recognizably  of 
strong  intellectual  powers,  strong  character ;  given  to  medita- 
tion, and  much  contemptuous  of  the  unmeditative  world  and  its 
noisy  nothingnesses ;  had  a  fine  limpid  style  of  writing  and 
delineating,  in  his  small  way  ;  a  fine  limpid  vein  of  melody  too  in 
him  (as   of  an  honest  rustic  fiddle,  good,  and    well  handled, 


iree: 


Of:: 
p. 

Fa: 
I'j.. 


tV: 


AFTERGLOW  303 

lit  wanting  two  or  more  of  the  strings,  and  not  capable 
f  much !  )  "  Or  even  this  :  "  To  my  private  self  his  divine 
^flections  and  unfathomabilities  seemed  stinted,  scanty,  palish, 
nd  uncertain  .  .  .  and  I  reckoned  his  poetic  storehouse  to  be 
ir  from  an  opulent  or  well-furnished  apartment !  " 

Carlyle  remembered  best  a  literary  breakfast  in  St.  James's 
itreet  in  or  about  1840,  given  by  Henry  Taylor,  at  which  he 
Dund  himself  in  Wordsworth's  company.  James  Spedding  was 
nother  of  the  guests.  Wordsworth  talked  much,  and  more, 
pparently,  about  the  mechanism  of  verbal  expression  than 
Carlyle  cared  for.  Carlyle's  sketch  of  his  appearance  and 
[iterance  ought  to  be  given  at  first  hand.  "  His  voice  was 
ood,  frank,  and  sonorous,  though  practically  clear,  distinct,  and 
orcible,  rather  than  melodious  ;  the  tone  of  him  businesslike, 
edately  confident ;  no  discourtesy,  yet  no  anxiety  about  being 
ourteous.  A  fine  wholesome  rusticity,  fresh  as  his  mountain 
freezes,  sat  well  on  the  stalwart  veteran.  You  would  have  said 
10  was  a  usually  taciturn  man.  .  .  .  His  face  bore  marks  of 
nuch,  not  always  peaceful,  meditation  ;  the  look  of  it,  not  bland 
)r  benevolent,  so  much  as  close,  impregnable  and  hard  ;  a  man 
nulta  tacere  loquive  paratus,  in  a  world  where  he  had  ex- 
)erienced  no  lack  of  contradiction,  as  he  strode  along!  The 
jyes  were  not  very  brilliant,  but  they  had  a  quiet  clearness  ;  there 
ivas  enough  of  brow,  and  well  shaped  ;  rather  too  much  cheek 

.  face  of  squarish  shape  and  decidedly  longish,  as  I  think  the 
lead  itself  was  (its  'length'  going  horizontal) ;  he  was  large  boned, 
ean,  but  still  firm-knit,  tall,  and  strong-looking  when  he  stood, 
1  right  good  steel-grey  figure,  with  rustic  simplicity  and  dignity 
ibout  him,  and  a  vivacious  strength  looking  through  him." 

Carlyle  and  Wordsworth  had  several  other  meetings.  At 
Dne  of  them  they  talked  of  the  French  Revolution  ;  and  Carlyle 
was  interested  in  Wordsworth's  personal  experiences  of  it.  On 
another  occasion  they  talked  of  English  poetry ;  but  from  this 
conversation  Carlyle  carried  off  no  idea  save  of  Wordsworth's 
literary  self-esteem.  What  he  liked  best  in  the  poet  was  his 
vigorous  word-painting  of  famous  men  he  had  known  in  early 
days.  "Never,  or  never  but  once,  had  I  seen  a  stronger 
intellect,  a  more  luminous  and  veracious  power  of  insight, 
directed  upon  such  a  survey  of  fellow-men  and  their  contem- 
porary journey  through  the  world." 


304  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 


^::- 


The  two  men  evidently  neither  loved  nor  understood  onc^, 
another ;  what  was  wesentlich  in  each  was,  on  the  whole,  hidden 
from  the  other.    Yet,  in  the  play  of  Hamlet,  there  is  much  besides 
the  character  of  Hamlet  that  is  interesting  and  important,  and 
Carlyle's  hard  unsympathetic  flashes  on  Wordsworth's  accidents 
are  not  without  some  value  in  helping  us  to  understand  his^' 
essence.      Let  us  leave  this  phase  with  one  little  picture,  by''^ 
no  means  rich  in  significance,  and  yet  called  by  Carlyle,  "  sym- 
bolical of  all."    Carlyle  and  Wordsworth  were  dining  in  company*-- 
somewhere  in   London,  while   Wordsworth  was   a   lion   there. '^' 
"  Dinner  was  large,,   luminous,  sumptuous  ;    I  sat  a  long  way  ?■• 
from  Wordsworth ;  dessert,  I  think,  had  come  in,  and  certainly  "^• 
there  reigned  in  all  quarters  a  cackle  as  of  Babel  (only  politer.  ^" 
perhaps),  which  far  up  in  Wordsworth's  quarter  (who  was  leftward  ''"■'■ 
on  my  side  of  the  table)  seemed  to  have  taken  a  sententious, '' ; 
rather  louder,  logical  and  quasi-scientific  turn,  heartily  unim-i^^ 
portant  to  gods  and  men,  so  far  as  I  could  judge  of  it  and  oi   ^' 
the  other  babble  reigning.     I    looked   upwards,  leftwards,  the^- 
coast  being  luckily  for  a  moment  clear  ;  there,  far  off,  beautifully  ^''■ 
screened  in  the  shadow  of  his  vertical  green  circle  *  (which  was  ^'^ 
on  the  further  side  of  him,  sat  Wordsworth,  silent,  slowly  but*"^- 
steadily  gnawing  some  portion  of  what  I  conceived  to  be  raisins,  ^ 
with  his  eye  and  attention  placidly  fixed  on  these  and  these  ^'^- 
alone.     The  sight  of  whom  and  of  his  rock-like  indifference  to  ^■ 
the  babble,  quasi-scientific  and  other,  with  attention  turned  on  ^•' 
the  small  practical  alone,  was  comfortable  and  amusing  to  me,'  ^•■• 
who  felt  like  him,  but  could  not  eat  raisins."  '  R 

Wordsworth  and  Walter  Savage  Landor  met  for  the  first ''"•^• 
time  in  the  summer  of  1832,  at  Moresby,  but  they  had  corre- ''^•' 
sponded  previously.     Wordsworth  passed  a  day  on  the  banks  of 
Wast  Water  in  Landor's  company,  and  evidently  liked  the  man. 
He  thought  him  original  and  learned  as  well  as  modest ;  and  he 
enjoyed  his   hearty  laughter.     Landor  was    Southey's   friend; 
and  Southey  kept  him  in  Italy  au  courant  of  Wordsworth's  work- 
in  poetry.     Landor  cordially,  though  critically,  admired  Words-' 
worth.     "The  first  poet  that  ever  wrote,"  he  once  said,  "waslK:: 
not  a  more  original  poet  than  he  is,  and  the  best  is  hardly  ai  "^ 

greater."     Wordsworth,  in  his  turn,  said  that  he  would  rather    C 

J».. 

♦  Carlyle  noticed  that  Wordsworth,  for  the  relief  of  his  poor  eyes,  carried  a 
circular  green  shade,  which  could  be  unfolded  and  stuck  in  a  stand. 


AFTERGLOW  305 

ave  written  some  of  Landor's  verses  than  any  poetry  produced 
his  time  ;  and  he  greatly  admired  the  Imaginary  Conversations y 
hen  they  began  to  come  out  in  1824.  They  met  again  in 
336,  in  London ;  and  this  time,  unhappily,  things  went  wrong, 
/"ordsworth  went  to  London  in  May,  to  see  his  friends  and  to 
;e  Talfourd's  play  lon^  with  Macready  in  it,  about  which  there 
as  a  flutter  of  expectation  in  literary  circles.  The  first  per- 
jrmance  was  at  Covent  Garden  ;  and  the  first-night  audience 
Lcluded  Wordsworth,  Crabb  Robinson,  Joanna  Baillie,  and 
,andor.  When  Wordsworth  appeared  in  a  box,  with  his  green 
jectacles  on,  the  audience  cheered  him.  He  shook  hands  with 
oanna  Baillie  in  the  adjoining  box;  took  off  his  spectacles, 
nd  looked  round  the  house,  nodding  to  those  he  recognized. 
[e  seemed  sad,  and  as  if  smiling  were  difficult.  However,  he 
it  patiently  through  the  long  play,  thumping  applause  from 
me  to  time  with  his  stick. 

It  was  at  Talfourd's  house  that  Wordsworth  and  Landor  met ; 
nd  Landor  resented  Wordsworth's  tone  about  his  friend 
)0uthey.  He  thought,  too,  that  Wordsworth's  dislike  of  Goethe 
^as  due  to  jealousy,  and  not  to  mere  misconception.  He  was 
ehement  and  impulsive,  and  he  turned  on  Wordsworth,  satiriz- 
ng  him,  and  even  stooping  so  low  as  to  parody  We  are  Seven, 
"rabb  Robinson,  who  lamented  Wordsworth's  insensibility  to 
he  merit  of  such  great  foreigners  as  Goethe  and  Voltaire,  but 
:new  that  it  came  from  nothing  worse  than  a  wooden  John 
Jullishness  of  mind,  remonstrated  with  Landor,  but  to  no  pur- 
)ose.  The  friendship  was  blighted.  In  December,  1842,  Landor 
Lttacked  Wordsworth  in  Blackwood  in  an  Imaginary  Conversa- 
ion  between  Porson  and  Southey  ;  and  in  April,  1843,  Edward 
Juillinan  rushed  in,  in  Wordsworth's  defence,  with  an  Imaginary 
^Conversation  between  Landor  and  Christopher  North.  Words- 
vorth  disapproved  of  his  championship,  chiefly  because  he 
bought  Landor  beneath  notice.  He  characterized  him  in 
language  unusually  strong  for  him.  "  His  character,"  he  wrote 
:o  Rowan  Hamilton,  "  may  be  given  in  two  or  three  words — a 
madman,  a  bad  man,  yet  a  man  of  genius,  as  many  a  mad- 
inan  is." 

Crabb  Robinson  himself  was  one  of  the  best  friends,  as 
Viends,  that  Wordsworth  ever  had.  He  was  intensely  apprecia- 
tive, and  yet  perfectly  aware  of  the  poet's  limitations,  and  not 

X 


306  WORDSWORTH  AND   HIS  CIRCLE 

afraid  to  point  them  out  to  him,  when  he  thought  them  discredit- 
able. He  was  much  in  Wordsworth's  company,  not  only  in 
London  when  the  poet  chanced  to  be  there,  but  many  times  at 
Rydal,  and  during  the  continental  tour  in  1837.  Robinson 
spent  the  Christmas  season  of  1835  at  Rydal  in  a  cottage  just 
below  the  Mount.  He  arrived  early  on  Christmas  Day,  to  find 
a  comfortable  fire  burning  in  his  lodgings,  and  tea  and  sugar 
provided  by  the  housewifely  hands  of  Mrs.  Wordsworth.  It 
was  always  at  the  same  season  that  he  paid  his  subsequent 
visits.  Mrs.  Wordsworth  valued  his  buoyant  spirits  as  a  stimu- 
lant for  her  husband  in  the  dark  days  ;  but  Robinson  insisted 
on  being  in  lodgings,  that  he  might  have  his  breakfast  and  milk 
supper  under  an  independent  roof.  These  winter  visits  became 
an  institution,  and  the  lively  barrister  was  looked  on  as  one  of  the 
family  at  Rydal  Mount.  ^^  No  Crabb,  no  Christinas  !'^  Edward 
Quillinan  used  to  say.  We  have  no  pleasanter  picture  of  those 
days  of  afterglow  than  that  which  the  diarist  has  sketched  for 
us.  The  Arnolds,  let  us  remember,  were  at  Fox  How ;  Dr. 
Arnold  was  in  his  full  vigour.  Robinson  would  read  in  bed 
of  a  morning,  and  occupy  himself  indoors  until  it  was  time 
to  go  to  the  Mount  for  the  one-o'clock  dinner.  Or  there 
might  be  quite  a  long  walk  with  Wordsworth  before  dinner, 
and  in  the  dusk  of  the  afternoon  a  stroll  to  Ambleside  for  the 
newspaper.  On  Sunday,  Dr.  Arnold  would  preach  ;  or  at  least 
they  would  meet  him  after  church,  and  there  might  be  deep 
theological  talks.  How  wholesome  for  Wordsworth,  in  those 
days  of  his  conservative  despair,  to  have  to  encounter,  in  the 
frosty  or  rainy  weather,  the  nimble  Whig  wits  of  Arnold  of 
Rugby  and  Crabb  Robinson,  both  of  whom  were  perfectly 
reverent,  but  neither  of  whom,  we  may  be  sure,  would  give  the 
poet  any  dialectic  handicap  !  The  Doctor  would  attack  Milton's 
Satan  as  not  wicked  enough ;  and  Wordsworth,  as  they  trudged 
along,  would  point  out  the  cunning  of  the  art  in  Paradise 
Regained ;  would  tell  once  more  the  story  of  the  genesis  of  the 
Ancieitt  Mariner  ;  or  would  discourse  on  the  significance  of  the 
sonnet.  Wordsworth  would  tell  Dr.  Arnold  how  Robinson 
helped  him  through  the  winter  ;  and  Robinson  would  climb  into 
the  coach,  after  his  six  weeks'  stay,  with  a  heart  full  of  tender- 
ness and  regret. 

In  those  days  of  the  'thirties,  before  Dora's  marriage,  and 


AFTERGLOW  307 

hile  Wordsworth's  public  fame  was  ripening,  the  nearness  of  the 
irnolds  was  a  great  enrichment  of  the  Rydal  Mount  life.  Fox 
[ow,  under  Loughrigg,  turning  its  back  on  the  sun,  but  with 
s  face  to  the  mountains  between  Wansfell  and  Fairfield,  to  which 
le  Arnolds  came  in  1833,  was  closely  associated  with  Words- 
orth  from  the  beginning.  The  poet  gave  his  help  in  the 
)rmalities  of  the  purchase  ;  he  advised  as  to  the  building  of  the 
ew  house  ;  he  directed  the  laying  out  of  the  delightful  grounds. 
[e  was  especially  insistent  about  the  chimneys  ;  like  his  own 
fc  Rydal,  they  must  have  some  colour,  a  bit  of  red  and  a  bit  of 
ellow  ;  and  they  must  be  partly  square  and  partly  round.  The 
uilders  remembered  how  "  Wudsworth  "  and  the  Doctor  would 
rgue  about  this  matter. 

The    rustics   remembered   also   that   Wordsworth   and    Dr. 
Lrnold  were  "  ter'ble  friends  ; "  but  the  records  of  their  actual 
itercourse  are  not  very  abundant.     There  must,  of  course,  have 
een  antagonism  ;  for  there  was  not  only  the  Doctor's  Whiggism, 
ut  his  impassioned   distrust   of  that  Anglican    Revival  with 
rhich  Wordsworth  was  more  and  more  inclined  to  sympathize. 
)n  the  other  hand,  Wordsworth  would   like  Arnold's  sturdy 
'rotestantism ;    and — but  why  should  one  try  to  explain  the 
itimacy  of  two  great  men,  however  divergent,  in  any  respects, 
ley    might    be }      Great    educators,    great    Christians,   great 
Englishmen,  could  they  meet  day  by  day  "in  the  silent  woody 
llaces,"  and  among  the  perpetual  hills,  far  from  the  din  of  con- 
troversy, and   not  rush  together  in  the  great  communions  of 
•hought  and  feeling  ?     Strange  that  Wordsworth  had  to  outlive 
jo  long  the  eager  reformer  young  enough  to  be  his  son !     In 
June,  1842,  there  dawned  at  Rugby  the  summer  morning  when 
i\rnold  heard  the  sudden  call — 

I  "  Thou  arosest  to  tread 

In  the  summer  morning,  the  road 
Of  death,  at  a  call  unforeseen." 

Much  less  comfort  was  in  the  proximity  of  Harriet  Marti- 
leau.  Between  her  and  Wordsworth  there  was  indeed  a 
)otential  antagonism  which  it  would  have  been  hard  to  trans- 
:end.  Logical,  materialistic,  utilitarian,  she  gave  her  talents  to 
:auses  which  were  far  removed  from  Wordsworth's  ideals.  More- 
over, she  had  an  acrid  tongue,  and  an  eye  quick  to  see  weaknesses 
ind  blemishes. 


la: 


308  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

She  came  to  Ambleside  in  the  spring  of  1845  resolved  tO| 
make  it  her  home  ;  and,  within  a  year,  had  bought  land  about  a  j; 
mile  from  the  town  on  the  Rydal  road,  and  built  herself  a  house,  • 
which  she  called  "  The  Knoll."     She  came  with  the  defiant  self- 
consciousness  of  heterodoxy,  foreseeing  that  provincial  respect- : 
ability  would  frown  upon  her,  and  resolved  to   have   as   few 
dealings  with  it  as  possible.     The  klaircisseme7it  of  her  heresies 
was  delayed  until  185 1,  when  Wordsworth  had  passed  beyond 
time ;   and  he  received  the  new-comer  graciously.     After  hisk 
fashion,  he  gave  practical  help  in  the  laying  out  of  her  little  o{ 
domain.     He  threw  himself  down  among  the  hazel  bushes  on.(fo: 
the  site  of  the  future  house,  and  discussed  architectural  points  ;d 
with  her.     When  she  began  farming  her  two  acres,  he  came  to 
see  her  first  calf.     As  a  great  man,  he  had,  of  course,  to  plant  a 
tree ;   and  she  remembered  his  workmanlike  way  of  doing  it, 
and  how  he  washed  his  hands  afterwards  in  the  watering-pot. 
He  washed  them  that  he  might  give  them  both  to  her,  and  wish 
her  many  happy  years  in  her  new  home.     "  Then,"  the  acrid k 
lady  goes  on  to  tell  us,  "  he  proceeded  to  give  me  a  piece  of  jc 
friendly  advice.     He  told   me  I   should   find  visitors  a  great 
expense,  and  that  I  must  promise  him  (and  he  laid  his  hand  onfc 
my  arm,  to  enforce  what  he  said)  I  must  promise  him  to  do  aS:  or 
he  and  his  sister  had  done,  when,  in  their  early  days,  they  had  ar 
lived  at  Grasmere.     *  When  you  have  a  visitor,'  said  he,  *  you 
must  say :  if  you  like  to  have  a  cup  of  tea  with  us,  you  are  veryfc 
welcome  ;  but,  if  you  want  any  meat,  you  must  pay  for  your 
board.     Now  promise  me  that  you  will  do  this.'  " 

As  Dorothea,  in  Middlemarchy  remarked  to  her  sister,  it  is 
only  certain  people  who  see  the  moles  on  a  hero's  face,  and  Miss 
Martineau  was  one  of  them.  But  the  moles  are  generally  there ; 
and  perhaps  it  is  well,  in  the  interests  of  realism,  that  there  is 
always  somebody  disagreeable  enough  to  notice  them.  Miss 
Martineau  was  struck  by  the  combination  of  extreme  economy 
and  generosity  displayed  by  the  Wordsworths.  One  could 
hardly  get  a  drop  of  cream  with  one's  tea  at  Rydal  Mount,  and 
yet  Wordsworth  would  outrage  political  economy  by  giving 
away  his  milk  to  cottagers  who  were  quite  able  to  buy  it  for 
themselves.  Miss  Martineau's  visits  to  the  Mount  were  few, 
though  she  was  always  welcome  there.  In  fact,  she  says  that 
she  went  only  twice.     She  kept  young  servants,  and  was  afraid 


AFTERGLOW  309 

t)  leave  them  even  for  a  few  hours.  She  had  no  carriage;  and 
was  a  mile  and  a  half  from  The  Knoll  to  Rydal  Mount.  But 
ley  often  met  in  the  open  air  ;  and  it  was  a  pleasure  to  the 
ever  deaf  woman  to  see  the  poet  on  a  winter's  day  in  "his 
oak,  Scotch  bonnet  and  green  goggles."  Unlike  some  other 
bservers,  she  reports  him  as  evidently  popular  among  children. 
lalf  a  score  of  them  would  accompany  him  on  the  road — one 
pulling  at  his  cloak,  or  holding  by  his  trousers  " — while  he 
ould  cut  switches  out  of  the  hedge  for  them.  He  would 
idulge  in  a  little  heavy  fatherly  badinage  at  her  expense.  He 
ould  rally  her  on  her  walking-powers,  though  he  ought  to  have 
nown  that  she  was  no  walker.  Meeting  her  one  day  with 
er  collaborator  Atkinson,  "  *  There,  there ! '  "  said  he,  laying  his 
and  on  Atkinson's  arm.  " '  Take  care !  take  care  !  Don't  let 
\er  carry  you  about.  She  is  killing  off  half  the  gentlemen  in 
>he  county  ! ' " 

I  She  noticed  the  change  wrought  on  Wordsworth  by  his 
laughter's  death,  and  thought  him  somewhat  selfish  in  his 
kief.  His  wife's  personality  attracted  her  more  than  his  own. 
I  Her  excellent  sense  and  her  womanly  devotedness  (especially 
r/hen  she  grew  pale  and  shrunk  and  dim-eyed  under  her  mute 
lorrow  for  the  daughter  whom  he  mourned  aloud)  made  her  by 
lar  the  more  interesting  of  the  two  to  me." 
i  A  charming  family  lived  at  Lancrigg  in  Easedale  in  those 
flays.  A  certain  Archibald  Fletcher,  a  Scottish  Advocate  of 
li'ery  advanced  reforming  views,  who  died  in  1828,  had  married 
iliza  Dawson,  a  delightful  woman  of  refined  tastes  and  literary 
i^ifts.  Some  years  after  her  husband's  death,  Mrs.  Fletcher 
::ame  often  to  the  Lake  country  with  her  children.  The  first 
asit  was  in  the  summer  of  1833,  while  Fox  How  was  building, 
md  the  Arnolds  were  temporarily  occupying  Wordsworth's  old 
louse,  Allan  Bank.  The  Fletchers  had  lodgings  in  a  farmhouse 
n  Easedale,  close  to  Lancrigg,  which  was  to  be  their  future 
lome.  It  was  a  sad  summer  to  Wordsworth,  because  it  was 
;hen  that  Dorothy's  illness  became  pronounced  ;  but  he  always 
orightened  up  when  he  walked  over  into  Easedale  and  saw 
:he  old  views  and  the  new  friends.  Both  Mrs.  Fletcher  and  her 
daughters,  Mary  and  Margaret,  who  afterwards  married  respec- 
tively Sir  John  Richardson  and  Dr.  John  Davy,  younger  brother 
of  Sir  Humphry,  have  left  memorials  of  their  impressions  of 


i; 


310  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

Wordsworth.     As  he  had    acted  for  the   Arnolds    about   Fox 
How,  so  he  did  for  the  Fletchers  about  Lancrigg.     In  1840  they 
settled  in,  and  for  the  next  ten  years  were  much  to  Wordsworth. 
He  loved  his  visits  to  Lancrigg,  and  all  he  did  and  said  was 
seen  and  heard  by  eyes  and  ears  of  love,  not  of  mere  gossippy 
intelligence.     There  were  many  meetings  and  many  walks,  of 
which  the  reminiscences  fill  up  and  round  off  our  idea  of  the  poet. 
This,  for  instance,  of  the  shortest  day  of  1843:  "Wordsworth 
and  Miss  Fenwick  came  early,  and  although  it  was  misty  and 
dingy,  he  proposed  to  walk  up  Easedale.  .  .  .  He  said  on  the 
terrace,  'This  is  a  striking  anniversary  to  me;    for  this  day  - . 
forty-four   years  ago,  my  sister  and  I  took  up  our  abode  at  ,,:. 
Grasmere,  and  three  days  after  we  found  out  this  walk,  which  ij!::; 
long  remained  our  favourite  haunt.'    There  is  always  something 
very  touching  in  his  way  of  speaking  of  his  sister  ;  the  tones  of,  : 
his  voice  become  more  gentle  and  solemn,  and  he  ceases  to  q:: 
have  that  flow  of  expression  which  is  so  remarkable  in  him  on  3;- 
all  other  subjects.     It  is  as  if  the  sadness  connected  with  her r^ 
present  condition  was  too  much  for  him  to  dwell  upon  in  con-  ^y. 
nection  with  the  past,  though  habit  and  the  '  omnipotence  of 
circumstance'  have  made  its  daily  presence  less  oppressive  to 
his  spirits.     He  said  that  his  sister  spoke  constantly  of  their 
early  days,  but  more  of  the  years  they  spent  together  in  other  |jy-. 
parts  of  England  than  those  at  Grasmere."     Here  again  is  a 
little  picture  which  tells  us  something.     On  January  22,  1844, 
Mrs.  Fletcher's  grandson  Henry  was  starting  for  Oxford.    "  His 
young  cousins  and  I,"  writes  Mrs.  Davy,  "went  down  with  him, 
to  wait  for  the  mail  in  the  market-place  [of  Ambleside].     We 
found   Mr.   Wordsworth  walking  about  before   the    post-office 
door,  in  very  charming  mood.     His  spirits  were  excited  by  theL' 
bright  morning  sunshine,  and  he  entered  at  once  on  a  full  flow 
of  discourse.     He  looked  very  benevolently  on   Henry,  as  he 
mounted  on  the  top  of  the  coach,  and  seemed  quite  disposed  to 
give  an  old  man's  blessing  to  the  young  man  entering  on  ani 
untried  field,  and  then  (nowise  interrupted  by  the  hurrying  to  and 
fro  of  ostlers  with  their  smoking  horses,  or  passengers  withL: 
their  carpet  bags)  he  launched  into  a  dissertation  ...  on  the. 
subject  of  college  habits,  and  of  his  utter  distrust  of  all  attempts 
to  nurse  virtue  by  an  avoidance  of  temptation.     He  expressed 
also  his  entire  want  of  confidence  (from  experience,  he  said)  of 


AFTERGLOW  311 

lighly-wrought  religious  expression  in  youth.  The  safest  train- 
ng  for  the  mind  in  religion  he  considered  to  be  a  contemplating 
if  the  character  and  personal  history  of  Christ.  '  Work  it/  he 
aid,  *into  your  thoughts,  into  your  imagination,  make  it  a  real 
>resence  in  the  mind.'  " 

There  was  a  great  celebration  of  the  poet's  seventy-fourth 
rtrthday  at  Rydal  Mount  on  April  9,  1844.  Lady  Richardson 
^rote  of  the  tables  spread  in  front  of  the  house,  and  of  a  con- 
ourse  of  Grasmere  boys  and  girls,  "  Their  eyes  fixed  with 
i^onder  and  admiration  on  the  tables  covered  with  oranges, 
gingerbread,  and  painted  eggs,  ornamented  with  daffodils, 
aurels,  and  moss,  gracefully  intermixed."  She  tells  how  the 
;hildren  played  hide-and-seek  among  the  shrubs,  and  how 
^leased  the  old  man  was  with  it  all. 

Besides  the  Lancrigg  ladies,  one  other  woman  held  an 
ntimate  place  in  the  Wordsworth  circle  in  the  latter  days, 
ienry  Taylor,  author  of  Philip  van  Artevelde^  and  famous  for 
lis  splendid  looks,  had  a  connection — a  cousin  of  his  stepmother 
—called  Isabella  Fenwick.  She  was  much  older  than  Taylor, 
)eing,  in  fact,  only  about  twelve  years  younger  than  Words- 
vorth.  She  was  a  very  remarkable  woman ;  fine-looking, 
itrong-minded,  deeply  religious,  and  yet — what  deeply  religious 
vomen  and  men  sometimes  fail  to  be — well  versed  in  varieties 
)f  human  nature,  and  therefore  humorous,  charitable,  and  free 
jf  spirit.  She  was  much  of  an  educator,  much  of  a  hero-' 
vorshipper.  Over  Henry  Taylor,  as  long  as  he  was  unmarried, 
)he  had  much  influence,  and  loved  to  exercise  it.  When  he 
Harried,  Miss  Fenwick  transferred  herself  to  Wordsworth. 
:Taylor,  who  had  known  Wordsworth  for  many  years,  kindled 
:he  lady's  interest  in  him.  In  1830  she  was  at  Rydal  Mount 
for  the  first  time.  In  the  'thirties  Miss  Fenwick  had  a  house  in 
London,  and  Wordsworth  stayed  with  her  on  his  way  to  the 
Continent  in  1837.  Next  year  she  settled  at  Ambleside,  and 
began  to  feed  herself  on  Wordsworthian  air.  In  1838  she  was 
writing  enthusiastically  to  Henry  Taylor  about  her  intercourse 
with  the  poet,  and  he  was  reading  The  Prelude  (which  he  was 
then  revising)  to  her.  Crabb  Robinson  reported  that  Words- 
worth talked  well  to  her  and  that  she  understood  him.  She 
regarded  him  with  that  intensity  of  interest  and  that  depth  of 
insight  which  only  a  woman  feels  and  exercises.   "What  strange 


312  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS  CIRCLE 

workings,"  she  wrote  to  Taylor,  "  there  are  in  his  great  mind, 
and  how  fearfully  strong  are  all  his  feelings  and  affections !  If  I 
his  intellect  had  been  less  powerful,  they  would  have  destroyed 
him  long  ago  ;  but  even  in  the  midst  of  his  strongest  emotions, 
his  attention  may  be  attracted  to  more  intellectual  speculation, 
or  his  imagination  excited  by  some  of  those  external  objects 
which  have  such  influence  over  him  ;  and  his  feelings  subside, 
like  the  feelings  of  a  child."  Soon  she  became  so  closely  knit 
to  the  Wordsworths  (Mrs.  Wordsworth  loved  her  enthusiasti- 
cally) that — about  the  end  of  1840 — she  went  to  live  at  Rydal 
Mount ;  and  was  an  almost  constant  inmate  for  many  years. 
"  I  would  be  content  to  be  a  servant  in  the  house,"  she  wrote, 
"  to  hear  his  wisdom."  Her  presence  was  of  especial  value  when 
Dora  went  away  to  be  married,  in  1841.  Wordsworth  dictated 
to  Miss  Fenwick  those  precious  bibliographical  notes,  prefixed, 
in  all  good  editions,  to  his  poems.  In  such  intimacy  it  was 
inevitable  that  a  shrewd  observer  like  Miss  Fenwick  should 
be  critical  of  her  hero  ;  and  critical  she  was.  She  chafed 
sometimes  under  his  self-esteem  ;  she  thought  some  of  his 
moods  unworthy.  But  she  was  faithful  unto  death  ;  and  much 
of  the  light  and  strength  of  the  home-life  at  Rydal  in  that  last 
decade  came  from  her.     She  died  in  185 1. 

The  Laureateship,  pressed,  as  we  have  seen,  on  Wordsworth's 
reluctance,  set  a  seal  to  his  public  estimation.  But  the  last 
years, 

"  Placid  in  their  going 
To  a  lingering  motion  bound," 

yet  moving  at  times  through  dark  waters,  have  that  privacy, 
that  domestic  inwardness,  which  marked  the  whole  of  Words- 
worth's life.  What  he  was,  rather  than  what  the  world  thought 
of  him  ;  the  light  he  gave  rather  than  the  rewards  he  received ; 
the  sound  of  his  voice  without  the  reverberations  of  fame — these 
are  what  matter  most  in  our  estimate.  From  this  point  of  view, 
his  death  was  in  perfect  keeping  with  his  life.  In  fulness  of 
days,  surrounded  by  the  love  and  reverence  of  a  perfect  home, 
the  strong  man  yielded  without  a  struggle  to  the  Power  that 
was  stronger  than  he.  It  was  the  spring  of  1850;  on  April  7 
he  would  be  eighty  years  old.  On  Sunday,  March  10,  he 
was   at   Rydal   chapel  for  the  last  time.      Spring  winds  bear 


I 


.  AFTERGLOW  313 

firdly  on  the  aged  :  on  that  very  Sunday,  he  looked  feeble  in 
J  cold  walk  to  Grasmere  with  his  sister-in-law  and  Edward 
(uillinan.  For  a  day  or  two  he  went  about  still,  calling  on 
;;rs.  Arnold,  calling  on  Quillinan.  But  deadly  shafts  were 
ying ;  and  on  March  14  he  was  pierced.  He  had  sat  too 
>ng  the  evening  before,  on  a  cottage  bench  near  White-moss, 
.'•oking  at  the  sunset.  Pleurisy  came  on  ;  and  for  more  than  a 
lonth  he  lay  with  ebbing  life.  His  wife  was  with  him,  and  his 
[dest  son  ;  Quillinan  was  constant  in  love  and  care ;  Dorothy, 
'ith  clouded  mind,  was  there  to  love  him  still.  On  April  23 — 
le  day  of  Shakespeare's  birth  and  death,  as  some  have  loved  to 
ote — as  his  cuckoo-clock  was  striking  noon,  he  passed  into  the 
;iimortal.  Some  of  his  friends,  looking  on  his  dead  face,  were 
truck  by  its  resemblance  to  Dante's,  others  by  the  look  of  his 
ister.  Dorothy  was  being  drawn  about,  as  usual,  in  her  chair, 
^s  she  passed  his  door  they  heard  her  say,  "  O  death,  where  is 
hy  sting  ?  O  grave,  where  is  thy  victory  ?  "  She  survived  him 
ive  years. 

The  funeral  was  of  the  simplest  and  most  private  kind. 
wVordsworth  had  put  on  record  his  wish  to  be  carried  to  the 
Trave .  Westmorland-wise,  on  the  shoulders  of  his  humble 
neighbours,  but  this  did  not  happen.  The  procession  by  the  two 
lakes  was  of  the  ordinary  kind.  Grasmere  church  was  filled, 
but  not  by  the  peasants,  whom  Wordsworth  had  so  idealized. 
They  never  understood  him. 

Mrs.  Wordsworth  was  able  to  be  there,  supported  by  her  two 
sons,  her  figure  bowed  by  grief.  Yet  she  did  not  faint,  as  they 
thought  she  might.  She  bore  up  calmly,  and  was  able  to  appear 
among  the  mourners  at  Rydal  Mount  later  in  the  day.  Nine 
years  after  she  was  laid  in  the  same  grave. 

Many  a  pilgrim  has  visited,  and  will  visit,  the  group  of 
kindred  graves  near  the  east  end  of  the  church,  the  Rothay 
murmuring  below.  The  one  of  chief  interest  is  marked  by  the 
plainest  of  stones  with  the  inscription,  William  Wordsivorth, 
1850  ;  and  below  it,  Mary  Wordsivorth,  1859. 

Such  simplicity  is  more  than  an  accident,  or  even  a  symbol. 
It  is  a  vital  part  of  the  noblest  genius  ever  devoted  to  showing 
the  depth  that  underlies  the  common,  the  majesty  that  is  in  the 
humble.  Wordsworth's  life  and  poetry  alike  were  without  pomp 
and  circumstance,  and  so  is  his  grave.    Towards  the  close  of  his 


314  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

life  he  said  that  his  chief  aspiration  was  to  fulfil  the  beatitude, 
Blessed  are  the  poor  in  spirit.  If  this  is  not  the  legend  which  we 
would  add  to  his  name,  there  is  another  of  which  none  will 
dispute  the  fitness :  Blessed  are  the  peacemakers ;  they  shall  be 
called  children  of  God. 


CHAPTER   XIV 
FAME 

WE  have  seen  enough,  in  the  course  of  our  journey  with 
Wordsworth,  to  show  us  in  what  various  esteem  his 
vork  was  held  during  his  lifetime,  and  how  long  he  had  to 
earn  to  win  his  soul  in  the  patience  of  unpopularity.  More 
:han  half  a  century  after  his  death,  we  are  in  a  position  to 
Tiake  some  estimate  of  the  curves  of  his  reputation,  and  to 
:onjecture  his  ultimate  place  among  English  poets. 

On  the  whole,  the  history  of  Wordsworth's  fame  has  been 
that  of  a  steady  advance  from  contempt  to  honour — honour 
which  seems  ever  on  the  increase.  But  in  his  reputation  in 
Britain  alone  the  story  has  to  take  note  of  many  phases  and 
eddies. 

Lyrical  Ballads  was  a  challenge  ;  an  enterprise  conscious  of 
its  own  novelty  and  daring ;  and  in  Lyrical  Ballads  Words- 
worth was  the  predominant  partner.  In  the  minds  of  two 
young  men  who  were  to  become  considerable  critics,  in  De 
Ouincey  and' John  Wilson,  he  found,  as  we  have  seen,  immediate 
enthusiastic  sympathy,  though,  in  the  case  of  Wilson,  it  was 
not  the  sympathy  of  unmixed  approval.  Still,  it  was  disciple- 
ship  ;  the  kind  of  appreciation  which  an  innovator  would  give  a 
great  deal  to  win.  It  did  not,  however,  represent  accurately 
any  large  section  of  critical  opinion  about  Wordsworth. 

During  at  least  the  first  quarter  of  the  nineteeth  century, 
Wordsworth  entirely  failed  to  win  popularity  among  the  general 
poetry-reading  and  poetry-buying  public.  This  was  the  more 
disappointing  that  in  those  days  there  was  a  relatively  much 
larger  poetry-reading  public  than  there  is  in  these,  when  novels 
and  plays  engage  so  much  superficial  literary  interest.  But  at 
popularity  of  this  kind  Wordsworth  did  not  aim,  and  he  was 

315 


DuC 


316  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

not  in  the  least  embittered  by  the  want  of  it.  He  knew  that 
he  could  not  compete  in  the  market  with  the  sumptuousness 
and  glitter  of  his  contemporaries,  with  the  attractiveness  of 
Scott  and  Byron  and  even  of  Southey ;  and,  though  he  thought 
amiss  and  too  lowly  of  that  rival  work,  he  was  justified  in  the 
serenity  of  his  self-esteem,  and  his  content  to  work  for  the 
future  and  the  few.  But,  though  the  public  was  heedless, 
the  narrower  critical  world  was  stirred  from  the  outset,  and 
three  movements  are  distinguishable. 

First  in  time,  and  making  most  noise,  came  the  stir  of  un- 
sympathetic criticism,  typically  represented  by  Jeffrey  in  the 
Edinhirgh  Review.  It  is  a  mistake  to  regard  this  criticism  as 
wholly  unfavourable,  or  to  think  of  Jeffrey  as  stamping  a 
clumsy  and  brutal  heel  on  the  fine  flowers  of  romantic  poetry.  I 
Jeffrey  was  an  accomplished  critic  and  a  discriminating  one ; 
his  dealings  with  Scott,  Byron,  and  Keats  make  it  quite  evident 
that  he  could  appraise  them  nearly  as  well  as  his  most  "  superior  " 
successors ;  his  appreciation  of  the  Elizabethans  was  as  strong, 
if  not  as  delicate  and  inward,  as  that  of  Charles  Lamb.  But  he 
was  essentially  a  critical  pedagogue  of  the  old-fashioned  type ; 
he  seemed  to  be  half-scolding  his  charge  even  when  he  com- 
mended them,  and  when  he  conceived  it  to  be  his  duty  to 
punish,  he  showed  little  mercy.  With  the  instincts  of  the 
schoolmaster  he  combined  those  of  the  partisan  and  the 
journalist ;  he  believed  in  the  "reality"  of  classes  and  "schools" 
as  many  mediaeval  thinkers  believed  in  the  "  reality  "  of  general 
ideas  ;  and  he  knew  that  only  opinions  served  up  hot  and  strong 
avail  to  sell  a  periodical.  \  He  by  no  means  denied  all  merit  to 
Wordsworth,  but  he  put  Wordsworth  into  a  "Lake  School," 
and  against  that  School  he  took  sides  ;  against  it  he  fought 
like  a  Trojan.  He  admitted,  for  example,  that  Lyrical  Ballads 
"were  deservedly  popular"  (only  a  hostile  eye,  by  the  way, 
could  have  detected  their  popularity) ;  "  they  were  undoubtedly 
characterized  by  a  strong  spirit  of  originality,  of  pathos,  and 
natural  feeling."  In  The  Excicrsion  he  found  pathos,  eloquence, 
tenderness,  sweetness,  and  other  good  things.  But  he  was  con- 
vinced that  the  essential  importance  of  Wordsworth  lay  in  his 
supposed  membership  of  the  supposed  Lake  brotherhood, — a 
brotherhood  of  literary  heretics  and  dissenters,  partly  of  German 
and  partly  of  Rousseau-ish  origin  ;  a  sect  which  the  Edinburgh 


FAME  317 

as  bound  to  suppress  in  the  name  of  literary  catholicity,  ortho- 
oxy,  and  apostolical  succession. 

In  proceeding  from  this  starting-point,  Jeffrey's  criticism  of 
Vordsvvorth  broke  down.     The  start  was  a  false  one.     Words- 
rorth  belonged  to  no  brotherhood,  no  party ;  even  in  the  first 
jsue  of  Lyrical  Ballads  he  was  working  for  his  own  hand  ; 
rith  Coleridge  he  hardly  co-operated.     And  though  there  are 
mteresting  affinities  between  some  of  Rousseau's  thought  and 
ome  of  Wordsworth's,  it  is  absurd  to  maintain  that  Words- 
v^orth  derived  from  Rousseau,  or  was  in  any  sense  a  propagan- 
dist  of  his   doctrines.      Failing   to   understand   Wordsworth's 
;olitariness  and  originality,  Jeffrey  failed  to  understand  him  at 
ill,  and  his  blame  and  his  praise  were  alike  nearly  worthless. 
By  the   time    1807  was   reached,  Wordsworth   had   published 
much  which  easily  lent  itself  to  smart  journalistic  ridicule,  and 
lelped  to  accumulate  the  discredit  of  the  imaginary  "  Lakers." 
Jeffrey  lived  under  the  constant  sense  of  a  kind  of  conspiracy 
among  the  mountains :  the  new  poets,  he  seemed  to  believe, 
haunted  them  like  a  nest  of  brigands.      TJiey  were  affected  ; 
they  were  exaggerated  ;  tJtey  were  silly  ;  they  were  revolutionary  ; 
and  they  hung  together  for  the  purpose  of  sowing  affectation, 
exaggeration,  silliness,  and  social  discontent  broadcast. 

Fortified   by  this   theory,  Jeffrey   had   an   easy   task   with 

Wordsworth's  poetry  in  detail.     By  this  time  he  ought  to  have 

discovered  that  Wordsworth,  whatever  his  faults,  was  not  only 

a  good  poet,  but  a  great  one  ;  but  he  never  made  that  discovery 

at   all.      He  believed   that  in  his  simplicity  Wordsworth  was 

imitating  Ambrose  Philips  ;  and  so  it  was  obvious  to  call  the 

lines  to   The  Small  Celandine  "namby-pamby."     As  to  Alice 

Fell:  "if  the  printing  of  such  trash  be  not  felt  as  an  insult  to 

the   public   taste,  we  are  afraid  it  cannot  be  insulted."      He 

;  seemed  to  be  stooping  to  uproot  a  noxious  weed  when,  speaking 

of  Resolution  and  Independence  in  words  which,  with  an  opposite 

innuendo,  would  be  an  excellent  criticism,  he  defied  "  the  bitterest 

enemy  of  Mr.  Wordsworth  to  produce  anything  at  all  parallel 

from    any   collection   of    English    poetry,    or    even    from    the 

specimens  of  his  friend  Mr.  Southey."     The  Lake  School  were 

tedious  and  affected,  and  so  was  Yarrow  Unvisited,     The  Lake 

School  were  always  imitating  somebody  ;   and  in  his  sonnets 

Wordsworth  was  at  his  best,  because  in  them  he  was  imitating, 


318  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

not  Quarles,  Ambrose  Philips,  Cowper,  Schiller,  or  Kotzebue, 
but  Milton. 

But  there  was  a  deeper  depth  waiting  for  poor  Jeffrey.  One 
does  not  expect  an  eminent  journalist  to  be  constitutionally  a 
philosopher ;  and  there  never  was  less  of  a  philosopher  than  the 
bright,  trenchant  Whig  lawyer  into  whose  hands  Wordsworth 
fell.  Jeffrey  had  an  uncomfortable  feeling  from  the  beginning 
/that  Wordsworth's  poetry  was  philosophic,  and  the  feeling  was 
much  strengthened  by  The  Excursion  and  The  White  Doe  of 
Rylstone.  The  feeling  took  shape  in  the  conclusion  that  Words- 
worth was,  or  pretended  to  be,  a  "  mystic  ; "  it  was  one  of  the 
sins  of  the  Lakers,  learned  from  Germany,  to  darken  with 
mysticism  the  clear  British  air.  (At  a  later  stage  Carlyle  gave 
Jeffrey  much  trouble  by  the  same  propensity.)  Mysticism, 
therefore,  must  be  got  rid  of  thoroughly.  It  is  perceptible  in 
the  Ode  to  D^ity^  and  of  that  Ode  we  accordingly  say,  in  our 
best  style,  that  in  it  "the  lofty  view  is  very  unsuccessfully 
attempted,"  and  concerning  two  lines  in  particular — 

"  Thou  dost  preserve  the  stars  from  wrong, 
And  the  most  ancient  Heavens,  through. thee,  are  fresh  and  strong  " — 


\f- 


that  they  "  seem  to  be  utterly  without  meaning  ;  at  least,  we 
have  no  sort  of  conception  in  what  sense  Dicty  can  be  said  to 
keep  the  old  skies /r^j-/^,  and  the  stars  from  wrong."  The  Ode 
on  Inti^nations  of  Immortality  has  its  venom  so  concentrated 
that  it  may  be  killed  by  one  jingling  phrase  :  "it  is  the  most 
illegible  and  unintelligible  part  of  the  publication." 

In  pursuing  this  method  with  The  White  Doe,  Jeffrey  had  a; 
f  leg  to  stand  on.     There  is  certainly  mysticism  in  it,  and  it  is' 
mysticism  which  does  leave  the  reader  somewhat  perplexed  and 
unsatisfied.     It  is  a  little  difficult,  when  one  has  finished  it,  to 
be  sure  what  it  is  all  about,  and  why  things  in  it  happen  as  they 
do.     It  is  an  ambitious  and  self-conscious  poem.     Wordsworth 
meant  to  do,  and  felt  that  he  was  doing,  something  specially 
remarkable  in  it;  and  perhaps  in  proportion  to  this  ambition; 
and  self-consciousness,  it  is  not  a  complete  success.     But  ati; 
least  it  is  a  beautiful  poem  ;  beautiful  in  its  melody  and  pathos  ; : 
beautiful  in  its  suggestiveness  and  tender  treatment  of  the  tie' 
between   man   and   the   humbler   creatures.      But  Jeffrey  saw'i 
nothing  of  the  beauty  ;  it  seemed  to  him  "to  consist  of  a  happy 


FAME  319 

nion  of  all  the  faults,  without  any  of  the  beauties,  which  belong 
D  [Mr.  Wordsworth's]  school  of  poetry."    In  his  best  journalese 
he  critic  explained  that  when  he  first  took  it  up  he  thought 
:  was   a   parody,  but   that   he   had  not   gone   far  till  he  felt 
intimately"  that   "nothing   in    the   nature   of  a  joke   could 
€  so  insupportably  dull."     In  Lyrical  Ballads  the   poet  was 
xhibited  on  the  whole  "  in  a  vein  of  very  pretty  deliration  ; " 
1  The   White  Doe  he  appears  "  in  a  state  of  low  and  maudlin 
mbecility."     And   so  on.     Enough   of  this  phase  of  Words- 
orthian  criticism. 
Another   phase   is   centrally  represented   by   Hazlitt.     We 
ftiay  perhaps  label  it  superior  critical  approval,  with  the  word 
M* superior"  in  inverted   commas.     It   stands  midway  between  n 
f  he  unsympathetic  and  uncomprehending  treatment  of  Jeffrey, 
und  the  enlightened  critical  sympathy  which  makes  the  third 
iohase  of  the  period.     Like  Jeffrey,  Hazlitt  loved  to  lecture  the 
oeople  he  was  criticizing  ;  he  had  much  of  Jeffrey's  cocksureness 
ind  partisanship.     Like  Jeffrey,  too,  he  was  a  journalist,  and  a 
/et  more   eminent   one  than  Jeffrey  ;    after  Defoe,  Hazlitt  is 
perhaps  the  most  distinguished  journalist,  pure  and  simple,  of 
pre-Victorian  times.     Like  the  journalism  which  Defoe  did  so 
Qiuch  to  found — that  of  Queen  Anne's  reign — the  journalism  of 
the  teens  of  the  nineteenth  century  was  half  literary  and  half 
political ;  and  Hazlitt,  its  most  brilliant  ornament,  made  ample 
use  of  the  double  inspiration.     He  was  a  liberal  when  Words- 
worth, Coleridge,  and  Southey  had  become  conservative,  and' 
this  antagonism  made  his  literary  epigrams  sting  like  whips.  / 
Nothing,  certainly,  in  that  kind  could  be  better  than  some  of 
Hazlitt's   dicta.      What   more,  for   instance,  could    Coleridge's 
worst  enemy  desire  for  him  than  such  treatment  as  this :  "  He 
is  equally  averse  to  the  prejudices  of  the  vulgar,  the  paradoxes 
of  the  learned,  or  the  habitual  convictions  of  his  own  mind.    He  1 
moves  in  an  unaccountable  diagonal  between  truth  and  false- 
hood, sense  and  nonsense,  sophistry  and  commonplace,  and  only 
assents  to  any  opinion  when  he  knows  that  all  the  reasons  are 
I  against  it.     A  matter  of  fact  is  abhorrent  to  his  nature ;  the 
very   air   of  truth   repels   him.     He   is   only   saved   from   the 
extremities   of  absurdity  by  combining   them  all  in  his  own 
person.     Two  things  are  indispensable  to  him — to  set  out  from 
no  premises  and  to  arrive  at  no  conclusion.     The  consciousness 


320  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

of  a  single  certainty  would  be  an  insupportable  weight  upon 
his  mind." 

The  hand  that  could  thus  castigate  Coleridge,  would  not,  we 
might  expect,  spare  Wordsworth.      Nor  did  it,  when  Hazlitt 
was  playing  the  journalist  rather  than  the  literary  critic  proper. 
Here  is  Jeffrey's  method  reproduced  in  perfection.     *'  The  spirit 
of  Jacobin  poetry  is  rank  egotism.     We  know  an  instance.     It 
is  of  a  person  who  founded  a  school  of  poetry  on  sheer  humanity, 
on  idiot  boys,  and  mad  mothers,  and  on  Simon  Lee,  the  old 
huntsman.     The  secret  of  the   Jacobin   poetry  and   the  anti-  ■ 
Jacobin  politics  of  this  writer  is  the  same.     His  lyrical  poetry 
was  a  cant  of  humanity  about  the  commonest  people,  to  level 
the  great  with  the  small ;  and  his  political  poetry  is  a  cant  oi 
loyalty   to   level   Bonaparte  with  kings  and  hereditary  imbe- 
cility. .  .  .  This  person  admires  nothing  that  is  admirable,  feels 
no  interest  in  anything  interesting,  no  grandeur  in  anything 
grand,  no  beauty  in  anything  beautiful.     He  tolerates  nothing 
but  what  he  himself  creates  ;  he  sympathizes  only  with  what 
can  enter  into  no  competition  with  him,  '  with  the  bare  earth 
and  mountain  bare,  and  grass  in  the  green  field.'      He   see^ 
nothing  but  himself  and  the  universe.     He  hates  all  greatness 
and  all  pretensions  to  it  but  his  own.     His  egotism  is,  in  this 
respect,  a  madness  ;  for  he  scorns  even  the  admiration  of  him-; 
self,  thinking  it  a  presumption  in  any  one  to  suppose  that  M 
has  taste  or  sense  enough  to  understand  him.      He  hates  all! 
science  and  all  art  .  .  .  he  hates  prose,  he  hates  all  poetry  bul' 
his  own."  \ 

This  bluster  was  political  :  Hazlitt  was  a  Bonapartisi 
liberal,  and  he  was  punishing  Wordsworth,  with  any  weapon: 
which  he  thought  would  serve,  for  being  a  constitutionalist 
But  there  was  another  Hazlitt — the  literary  critic  ;  and  tkii 
Hazlitt  was  for  Wordsworth,  not  against  him.  The  man  whc 
wrote  what  has  just  been  quoted,  wrote  less  than  two  yean; 
later,  "  Mr.  Wordsworth  is  the  most  original  poet  now  living.  . 
Of  many  of  the  Lyrical  Ballads  it  is  not  possible  to  speak  ir 
terms  of  too  high  praise  .  .  .  they  are  of  inconceivable  beauty 
of  perfect  originality  and  pathos.  They  open  a  finer  and  deepei 
vein  of  thought  and  feeling  than  any  poet  in  modern  times  has 
done  or  attempted."  Jeffrey  would  now  and  then  fling  a  morsel 
of  praise  at  Wordsworth ;  but  Hazlitt  is  here  doing  something 


FAME  321 

ery  different.  This  is  sympathetic  criticism  ;  and,  for  its 
nmediate  purpose,  it  is  adequate.  Hazlitt's  sympathy  with 
Vordsworth  was  incomplete,  but  it  was  genuine.  He  knew  the 
oet's  weaknesses ;  but  he  knew  also  his  strength  and  how 
nighty  it  was.  He  was  not  a  philosopher  ;  but  he  made  what 
5,  after  all,  the  central  discovery  about  Wordsworth,  namely, 
hat  he  was.  He  describes  Wordsworth's  higher  egoism,  his 
elf-projection  into  things,  with  some  hardness  of  tone,  but  with 

true  insight.     Of  Lyrical  Ballads  he  says,  "  Fools  have  laughed 
it,  wise  men  scarcely  understand,  them.     He  takes  a  subject  or 
L  story  as  pegs  or  loops  \sic\  to  hang  thought  and  feeling  on  ; 
he  incidents  are  trifling,    in  proportion   to  his   contempt   for 
mposing  appearances  ;  the  reflections  are  profound,  according 
;o  the  gravity  and  aspiring  pretensions  of  his  mind.  .  .  .  He 
las  dwelt  among  pastoral  scenes,  till  each  object  has  become 
:onnected   with   a   thousand   feelings,   a  link  in   the  chain  of 
;hought,  a  fibre  of  his  own  heart.  .  .  .  To  the  author  of  the 
Lyrical  Ballads,  nature  is  a  kind  of  home  ;  and  he  may  be  said 
:o  take  a  personal  interest  in  the  universe.     There  is  no  image 
30  insignificant  that  it  has  not,  in  some  mood  or  other,  found 
the  way  into  his  heart.  .  .  .  He  has  described  all  these  objects 
in  a  way,  and  with  an  intensity  of  feeling  that  no  one  else  had 
done   before   him,    and   has   given   a    new   view   or  aspect  of 
nature.  .  .  .  Remote  from  the  passions  and  events  of  the  great 
world,  he  has  communicated  interest  and  dignity  to  the  primal 
movements  of  the  heart  of  man,  and  ingrafted  his  own  conscious' 
reflections  on  the  casual  thoughts  of  hinds  and  shepherds.  .  .  . 
'The  tall  rock  lifts  its  head  in  the  erectness  of  his  spirit ;  the 
cataract  roars   in  the  sound    of  his  verse.  .  .  .  There  is  little 
mention  of  mountainous  scenery  in  Mr.  Wordsworth's  poetry ; 
.but  by  internal  evidence  one  might  be  almost  sure  that  it  was 
written   in    a    mountainous    country,    from    its    bareness,    its 
simplicity,  its  loftiness,  and  its  depth."     This,  we  feel,  is  the 
essential  Wordsworth  ;  this  is  Wordsworth  almost  as  Matthew 
Arnold  understood  him. 

Hazlitt,  of  course,  wrote  always  as  a  contemporary  critic, 

with   no   obligation   to   be   reverent,   and    with    an    imperious 

obligation  to  be  effective.     He  has  said  a  great  deal  about  The 

Excursion^  with  which,  whether  in  its  praise  or  its  blame,  little 

;  fault  can  be  found.     He  is  quite  right,  we  feel,  when  he  finds  in 

Y 


322  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

it  a  lack  of  constructive  power  proportionate  to  its  pretensions 
and  its  length.  He  is  quite  right  when  he  detects  in  it  both 
flatness  and  insipidity.  Yet  we  should  feel  debarred  from 
saying  of  it,  as  he  does,  "  The  effect  was  like  being  ushered  into 
a  stately  hall  and  invited  to  sit  down  to  a  splendiJ  banquet  in 
the  company  of  clowns,  and  with  nothing  but  successive  courses 
of  apple-dumplings  served  up."  That  is  not  the  way  to  speak 
of  a  classic  ;  and  The  Excursion,  with  all  its  faults,  is  a  classic. 

Thirdly,  there  is  to  be  distinguished,  alike  from  Jeffrey's 
jfecornful  depreciation,  and  Hazlitt's  somewhat  patronizing 
(approval,  a  body  of  cordially  and  intimately  sympathetic 
j  criticism,  which  is  centrally  represented  by  Coleridge,  and  the 
later,  soberer,  "  Christopher  North."  We  have  already  found  it 
in  De  Quincey,  in  Charles  Lamb,  and  in  Southey.  In  that 
Quarterly  article  which  was  so  pulled  about  by  Gifford,  but 
which  remains  as  an  authentic  and  official  counter-manifesto  to 
Jeffrey,  Charles  Lamb  came  to  close  quarters  with  The  Excursion, 
In  spite  of  the  editor's  mauling,  Wordsworth  might  well  have 
been  grateful  for  the  appreciation.  For  Lamb  writes  reverently 
as  well  as  approvingly ;  he  has  no  scorn  for  The  Excursion ; 
makes  no  apology  for  it.  Even  Despondency  Corrected,  the 
Elizabethan  Lamb — sometimes  so  non-moral  as  to  have  no  word 
of  disapproval  for  Wycherley — singles  out  as  the  best  part  of  the 
poem.  And  when,  at  the  close,  he  deals  with  Wordsworth's 
unpopularity,  he  accounts  for  it,  not  by  any  faults,  but  by  his 
boldness  and  originality,  and  by  the  blindness  of  readers  to 
those  grandeurs  and  simplicities  of  the  world  which  were 
revealed  to  the  poet.  "It  \The  Excursion']  must  indeed  be 
approached  with  seriousness.  .  .  .  Those  who  hate  the  Paradise 
Lost  will  not  love  this  poem.  The  steps  of  the  great  master  are 
discernible  in  it ;  not  in  direct  imitation  or  injurious  parody,  but 
in  the  following  of  the  spirit,  in  free  homage  and  generous 
subjection."     Greater  praise  there  could  hardly  be. 

But  the  most  systematic  exposition  of  this  kind  of  criticism 
was  in  Coleridge's  Biographia  Liter  aria,  published  in  1817. 
This  desultory  book  is  one  of  the  landmarks  of  romantic 
criticism.  It  reveals,  in  the  light  shed  by  an  absolutely  great 
critic,  the  inner  workings  of  a  literary  movement  in  which  he 
bore  a  chief  part.  The  Wordsworthian  criticism  contained  in 
it,  however,  has  not  all  an  equally  absolute  value.     Part  of  it 


FAME  323 

s  criticism,  not  of  Wordsworth's  poetry,  but  of  his  theories  of 
poetry,  imagination  and  fancy  ;  and  with  those  theories  Cole- 
ridge had  uncomfortable  personal  entanglements.  He  collabo- 
rated with  Wordsworth  in  the  original  Lyrical  Ballads^  and 
then  he  edged  out  of  the  collaboration.  The  theory  of  poetry 
which  Lyrical  Ballads  exemplified  was  excogitated  by  the  two 
men  on  the  Nether  Stowey  road  and  among  the  Ouantocks ; 
but  when  Wordsworth  published  the  full  exposition  of  the  theory 
in  later  issues,  Coleridge  did  not  find  himself  altogether  in 
agreement  with  it.  Much  of  Biographia  Liter  aria  is  occupied 
with  dissent  from  Wordsworth's  doctrines  of  imagination  and 
poetic  diction,  and  with  a  display  of  the  inconsistencies  between 
his  theories  and  his  practice.  But  at  last  the  critic  forgets 
controversy,  and  deals  with  the  absolute  value  of  Wordsworth's 
poetry  as  it  was  known  in  1817. 

Coleridge's  criticism  from  this  point  of  view  is  very  far  from 
being  all  praise.  He  complains  of  Wordsworth's  egotism  as 
a  limitation.  He  finds  many  faults  and  defects  in  his  poetry, 
and  he  begins  by  stating  them.  And  when  he  comes  to 
praise,  he  uses  an  ascending  climax,  in  which  the  highest 
comes  last.  We  must  therefore  begin  at  the  end  if  we  would 
know  where  Coleridge  "  places  "  Wordsworth.  He  places  him, 
he  estimates  his  absolute  rank,  in  the  following  sentences :  / 
. "  Lastly,  and  pre-eminently,  I  challenge  for  this  poet  the  gift  ^ 
"of  imagination  in  the  highest  and  strictest  sense  of  the  word.  ... 
In  imaginative  power,  he  stands  nearest  of  all  modern  writers 
to  Shakespeare  and  Milton ;  and  yet  in  a  kind  perfectly 
unborrowed  and  his  own."  This  is  enough  ;  such  an  utterance 
from  such  a  man,  side  by  side  with  the  judgments  of  Jeffrey 
and  Hazlitt,  makes  the  picture  of  early  criticism  all  but  com- 
plete. The  rest,  whether  praise  or  dispraise,  is,  by  comparison, 
detail.     Yet  it  is  important  detail ;  and  we  may  glance  at  it. 

It  is  notable  that  Coleridge  had  the  insight  to  praise  highly 
Wordsworth's  style  :  i.e.,  in  particular,  the  careful  appropriateness 
of  his  words,  their  "  untranslatableness,  in  words  of  the  same 
language  without  injury  to  the  meaning."  The  value  of  this 
praise  is  heightened  by  Coleridge's  consciousness  of  what  he 
calls  the  "  inconstancy "  of  Wordsworth's  style,  his  frequent 
lapses  in  sentence  or  statement  from  the  distinguished  to  the 
prosaic.     There  is  no  doubt  that  Wordsworth  aimed  at  extreme 


324  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

verbal  conscientiousness  and  precision  ;  and  we  must  be  grateful 
to  Coleridge  for  hailing  his  success,  and  distinguishing  it  from 
those  deficiencies  in  style  which  have  bulked  so  large  to  many 
readers.  And  we  must  agree  with  him  in  finding  in  it,  as  he 
does,  a  moral  as  well  as  a  literary  element,  an  evidence  of  truth- 
fulness as  well  as  of  artistic  skill. 

Coleridge  urges  also  the  freshness  and  originality  of  Words- 
worth's thought ;  his  truth  to  Nature ;  his  deep  pathos,  born  of 
human  sympathy.  The  sympathy,  he  truly  maintains,  is  that 
of  a  spectator  rather  than  of  a  fellow-sufferer  in  the  strict  sense ; 
but  perhaps,  as  art,  it  is  none  the  less  wonderful  for  that.  "  In 
this  mild  and  philosophic  pathos,"  says  Coleridge,  "  Wordsworth 
seems  to  me  without  a  compeer.  Such  he  is;  so  he  writes.^* 
On  the  other  side  of  the  shield,  as  Coleridge  saw  it,  there  were 
Wordsworth's  "  inconstancy  "  and  its  derivatives  ;  his  matter-of- 
factness,  his  prosaic  detail,  his  frequent  failure  to  produce 
imaginative  fusion.  Nor  was  Coleridge  able  to  approve  Words- 
worth's addiction  to  rural  forms  of  low  life,  though  his  reason 
for  disapproval  was  different  from  those  of  the  scornful  critics. 
He  was  ready  with  some  reservations  to  admit  the  essential 
dignity  of  the  humblest  human  being,  and  the  equality,  in 
certain  respects,  of  all  men  ;  but  these  were  facts,  he  considered, 
for  the  moralist  rather  than  the  poet ;  the  poet's  primary  aim  is 
aesthetic ;  and  it  is  somewhat  morbid  to  derive  poetic  pleasure 
exclusively,  or  even  chiefly,  from  the  lowest  rank  of  life,  especially 
when,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Wanderer  in  The  Excursion,  the  senti- 
ments attributed  to  a  pedlar  would  have  been  more  relevant  to 
some  more  dignified  personage. 

Finally,  Coleridge  complained  of  an  occasional  want  of  the 
sense  of  proportion  in  Wordsworth  ;  of  an  approach  at  times  to 
"  mental  bombast,"  the  use  of  "  thoughts  and  images  too  great 
for  the  subject."  It  is  the  curse  of  those  in  whom  the  sense  of 
humour,  involving  the  sense  of  proportion,  is  feebly  developed. 

Not  much  later  than  Biographia  Liter  aria,  Blackwood  took 
up  the  championship  of  Wordsworth  with  all  the  generous- 
hearted  vigour  of  "Christopher  North."  Like  Coleridge,  and 
unlike  both  Jeffrey  and  Hazlitt,  Wilson  refused  to  adopt  the 
"  superior "  attitude  in  criticizing.  "  For  our  own  parts,"  he 
wrote,  speaking  for  Maga,  "we  intend  at  all  times  to  write  of 
great  living  poets  in  the  same  spirit  of  love  and  reverence  with 


FAME  325 

which  it  is  natural  to  regard  the  dead  and  the  sanctified  ;  and 
this  is  the  only  spirit  in  which  a  critic  can  write  of  his  con- 
temporaries without  frequent  dogmatism,  presumption,  and 
njustice."  Wilson  could  make  a  sly  jest  at  Wordsworth's 
expense,  but  only  over  the  cheering  cup  of  an  ambrosial  night ; 
in  his  serious  hours  he  kept  the  enthusiasm  of  his  youth,  and 
was  ready  to  maintain  that  Wordsworth  was  one  of  the  great 
poets  of  his  age,  one  of  the  greatest  poets  of  any  age.  He 
recognized  the  philosophy  and  ethical  elevation  of  his  poetry  ; 
the  "  love,  benignity,  and  ethereal  purity  "  which  made  him  a 
unique  interpreter  of  Nature.  He  considered  him  all  but 
absolutely  original  in  two  respects  :  as  a  revealer  of  the  more 
hidden  and  "  silent "  laws  of  the  universe  ;  and  as  a  revealer 
of  the  higher  and  more  "  beautiful,"  because  gentler,  phases  of 
human  nature.  In  both  respects  he  seemed  to  Wilson  other 
than  characteristically  English  ;  his  philosophy,  in  its  contem- 
plative quietude,  was  "  Indian  "  rather  than  British  ;  his  studies 
in  humanity  were  far  away  from  the  tastes  which  find  poetry 
only  in  characters  like  Richard  the  Third,  Milton's  Satan,  or 
the  Giaour,  Wilson  cordially  admitted  Wordsworth's  Miltonic 
rank ;  and,  in  some  respects,  was  disposed  to  put  him  above 
Milton.  His  sonnets,  he  thought,  were  finer  than  Milton's  ;  and 
"the  openings  into  immutable  brightness  and  harmony"  which 
it  was  given  to  Wordsworth  sometimes  to  reveal,  were  diviner 
than  any  sublimities  of  terror,  tumult,  or  discord.  There  was,  in 
short,  an  eternal  value  in  Wordsworth's  poetry  which  must 
ensure  its  immortality.  It  was  "impossible,  in  the  very  nature 
of  things,  that  he  ever  could  be  eclipsed." 

Writing  in  the  'twenties,  Wilson  was  able  to  recognize  that 
'  the  tide  had  turned  ;  that  Wordsworth's  influence  was  already 
great  and  was  waxing.  He  found  Wordsworth  in  Scott, 
Coleridge,  Southey,  Crabbe,  even  in  Byron.  "The  two  last 
cantos  of  Childe  Harold  .  .  .  are  in  many  places  absolutely 
written,  it  may  be  said,  by  Wordsworth.  He  it  was  that  taught 
Byron  how  to  look  on  a  mountain,  and  how  to  listen  to  a 
cataract  or  the  sea."  That  may  have  been  so ;  but  it  was 
Byron's  lasting  vogue  and  the  wide  appeal  of  the  sentimentalism 
borrowed  from  him  by  lesser  versifiers,  which  was  the  chief  bar 
to  Wordsworth's  popularity.  Those  who  were  leaving  Byron 
behind  did  not  turn  to  Wordsworth,  but  occupied  themselves 


326  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

with  "L.  E.  L."  and  Mrs.  Hemans  until  Tennyson  was  ready 
for  them. 

But  great  powers  were  on  Wordsworth's  side,  and  his  hour 
had  come.  In  the  end  of  the  'twenties  there  was  a  great  stir 
in  the  national  life,  and  that  stir  helped  Wordsworth.  With 
the  usual  irony  of  things,  the  Liberalism  which  he  so  feared 
and  hated  helped  to  bring  men  to  his  feet.  If  the  Romantic 
Revival  was  over,  it  was  over  only  as  summer  is  over  when  it 
passes  into  autumn.  It  was  gathering  in  some  of  the  many 
fruits  of  its  harvest,  and  in  that  enrichment  Wordsworth  was 
made  rich.  Poetry  like  his,  founded  in  revolution,  permeated 
by  philosophy,  and  maintaining,  with  serene  inflexibility,  the 
indefeasible  dignity  of  essential  human  nature,  could  not  be 
alien  to  an  age  of  new  ventures  in  thought  and  faith,  an  age 
eager  to  begin  an  assault  on  privilege.  The  newer  Liberalism 
was  too  young  to  think  of  Wordsworth  as  a  lost  leader ;  in  so 
far  as  Liberalism  means  thought  as  opposed  to  habit,  there  was 
much  in  Wordsworth  to  nourish  Liberalism,  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  higher  Conservatism  which  arose  in  opposition  to 
Liberalism,  the  Conservatism  which  idealized  the  past,  and 
found  a  voice  in  The  Chi'istian  Year  and  the  Oxford  Tracts, 
might,  if  it  would,  claim  Wordsworth's  direct  support. 

It  was  in  1839  that  Wordsworth's  general  fame  was 
announced  by  the  Oxford  Doctorate  ;  and  it  was  in  the  course 
of  the  'thirties  that  he  was  quietly  winning  the  posts  from  which 
his  forces  never  have  been,  and  never  will  be,  dislodged.  He 
had  a  great  ally  in  his  old  University.  Byron  was  still  power- 
ful at  Cambridge  ;  but,  among  the  younger  and  abler  men  there, 
there  was  a  band  of  keen  Wordsworthians  who  pitted  their 
leader  against  Byron.  The  disciples  of  Coleridge,  who  were 
many  at  Cambridge,  were,  of  course,  readers  and  admirers  of 
Wordsworth.  What  was  practically  a  new  cult  was  eagerly 
adopted  by  men  like  Monckton  Milnes,  John  Sterling,  and  some 
others.  Nothing  could  be  more  significant  of  Wordsworth's 
widening  power  than  John  Stuart  Mill's  testimony.  Mill, 
though  he  had  Cambridge  friends,  was  not  a  Cambridge  man. 
He  was  educated  by  his  father,  trained  in  utilitarian  radicalism 
and  agnosticism  for  utilitarian  radicalism  and  agnosticism. 
In  1826  he  passed  through  one  of  the  crises  to  which  thoughtful 
men  are  subject ;  his  creed  failed  him,  his  power  of  hoping  and 


FAME  S27 

icting  seemed  to  die.  In  1828  he  first  read  Wordsworth  ;  and 
ife,  faith,  and  hope  came  back.  Mill  did  not  cease  to  be  an 
agnostic  and  a  utilitarian;  but  he  became,  through  Wordsworth's 
agency,   a  new  man.     He  was  no  Wordsworthian  ;  he  thought 

ere   were   greater   living   poets   than   Wordsworth ;    nay,   he 
:hought  him   "the  poet  of  unpoetical   natures."      But  all  the 

reater   on  this  account  was,   he  believed,  his  healing  power.  ! 
Mightier  poets    might    soar  too   high,   and    dazzle   instead    of  j 
comfort.     Wordsworth,  by  his  contemplative  tranquillity,  taught 
the  art  of  lasting  happiness. 

Mill   remained    a    Benthamite   after    he   came    to   admire 
Wordsworth.      Frederick  Maurice  upheld  Wordsworth  against 
Utilitarianism  at   Cambridge ;   but   he   never  whole-heartedly 
cared  for  him  ;  he  thought  him  too  egoistic  to  be  a  great  spiritual  l 
teacher.     Henry  Tabor's  was  a  powerful  voice  for  Wordsworth 
at  this  juncture.     In  1834  and  1841  respectively,  he  wrote  in  the! 
Quarterly  essays  on  Wordsworth's  poetry  in  general,  and  on  his 
sonnets  in  particular.   Taylor  noted  the  strong  turn  of  the  tide  in 
Wordsworth's  favour  during  the  ten  years  before   1834.      He 
himself,  though  no  blind  partisan,  had  no  hesitation  in  hailing 
Wordsworth  as  the  greatest  poet  and  philosopher  of  his  age. 
Primarily  he  thought  him  a  poet :  he  was  a  philosophic  writer 
only  "in  the  sense  in  which  any  man  must  be  so  who  writes 
from  the  impulses  of  a  capacious  and  powerful  mind,  habituated 
to  observe,  to  analyze,  and  to  generalize."     His  philosophy  was 
his  own ;  and  could  be  understood  only  by  those  in  sympathy 
with  him  as   a   poet.      Taylor   grasped   the   central   fact   that 
Wordsworth's  subject  was  man  ;    but  man  "  never  divested  of 
his  relations  to  external  nature.     Man  is  the  text ;  but  there  is 
always  a  running  commentary  of  external  phenomena." 

Wordsworth,  Taylor  thought,  was  sometimes  artificial  in  his 
simplicity,  and  so  gave  the  enemy  occasion  to  blaspheme  ;  and,  / 
in  such  poems  as  The  Idiot  Boy^  he  attempted  an  impossible , 
amalgam  of  "  the  trivial  and  the  grave,  the  imaginative  and  the : 
familiar."     Yet  his  habitual  sincerity  was  one  of  the  sources  of 
his  strongest  power,  and  another  was  the  accuracy  of  his  know- 
ledge founded  on  sympathy.    Nor  had  he  anything  to  be  ashamed 
of  in  his  style.     Speaking  of  Beggars,  Taylor  dwells  on  "  the 
consummate  art  with  which  it  is  constructed  ;  the  free  vigour  of 
the  *  liquid  lapse '  of  the  verse  ;  the  care  which  is  taken  that  there 


328  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

shall  be  no  prominences,  nothing  which  shall  arrest  attention 
and  exact  admiration  for  parts  to  the  injury  of  the  rest" 

For  Wordsworth's  intellectual  powers  in  general,  Taylor  had 
the  highest  admiration ;  he  would  not  have  been  misplaced  in 
any  situation  ;  he  was  in  possession  of  '*a  complete  mind." 

Yet  in  the  fame  which  Wordsworth  reaped  in  the  last  twenty 
I  years  of  his  life,  his  power  as  a  spiritual  teacher  was  the  chief 
/  factor.  His  most  appreciative  readers  in  his  old  age  did  not 
think  of  comparing  him  with  Byron  ;  they  were  not  concerned 
either  to  condemn  or  defend  the  novelties  with  which  he  fluttered 
critical  dovecots  half  a  century  before.  Great  seriousness,  great 
conscientiousness  was  abroad  ;  there  was  much  individual  heart- 
searching  ;  great  variety  in  social  effort ;  much  intensity  of 
divergent  religious  thought.  Wordsworth,  standing  outside  all 
this,  was  to  a  large  extent  the  poet  of  it.  He  was  resorted  to 
as  a  philosopher,  a  reconciler,  able  to  grant  Nature's  own  peace 
to  tired  effort  and  wounded  hearts.  The  Coeleste  lumen  of  which 
Keble  spoke  in  his  Creweian  oration  was  the  light  of  his  poetry 
to  the  most  discerning  in  those  days.  It  was,  as  the  same 
grateful  reader  wrote  five  years  later,  because  Wordsworth, 
whatever  was  his  theme,  raised  men's  minds  "  to  holier  things  " 
that  he  was  loved  and  honoured. 

Frederick  Robertson  of  Brighton,  a  man  of  the  keenest 
sensibilities,  religious  and  literary,  spoke  words  about  Words- 
/worth  in  1853  which  are  significant  as  to  this  phase  of  his 
/reputation.  He  told  an  audience  of  working-men  that  for  years 
he  had  tried  to  make  Wordsworth's  principles  the  guiding  prin- 
ciples of  his  own  inner  life.  He  proceeded  :  "  The  general 
opinion  about  Wordsworth  is  exceedingly  superficial.  To  the 
mass  of  the  public  all  that  is  known  of  him  is  a  conception 
something  like  this :  They  have  heard  of  an  old  man  who  lived 
somewhere  in  the  Lake  District,  who  raved  considerably  of  Lake 
scenery,  who  wrote  a  large  number  of  small  poems,  all  of  them 
innocent,  many  of  them  puerile  and  much  laughed  at,  at  the 
time  they  appeared,  by  clever  men  ;  that  they  were  lashed  in 
the  Reviews,  and  annihilated  by  Lord  Byron." 

Robertson's  own  high  estimate  of  Wordsworth  was  very 
largely  ethical.  "  The  work  he  did,  and  I  say  it  in  all  reverence, 
was  the  work  which  the  Baptist  did  when  he  came  to  the 
pleasure-laden  citizens  of  Jerusalem  to  work  a  reformation  ;  it 


FAME  329 

vas  the  work  which  Milton  tried  to  do,  when  he  raised  that 
;lear,  calm  voice  of  his  to  call  back  his  countrymen  to  simpler 
nanners  and  simpler  laws." 

Plainly,  then,  even  at  the  date  of  his  death,  when  he  had    / 
)een   seven   years    Poet    Laureate   by   universal    acclamation,  / 
A^ordsworth  was   not   a   popular   poet.      The   echoes   of   the 
nocking  laughter  which  greeted  his  early  appearances  had  not 
juite  died  away.     The  mantle  of  mere  popularity  had  passed 
rem  Byron,  first  to  the  minor  sentimentalists,  and  then  straight 
:o  Tennyson,  who,  during  the  whole  of  Wordsworth's  laureate- 
jhip,  and  in  the  years  immediately  following  his  death,  interested 
(the  poetry-reading  public  much  more  keenly  than  Wordsworth 
did.     Yet  a  thoughtful  critic,  now  little  heeded,  who  was  too 
soon  lost  to  English  letters,  George  Brimley,  the  librarian  of 
Trinity   College,  Cambridge,  estimating  Wordsworth  in    185 1, 
wrote  thus :  "  William  Wordsworth  is  generally  allowed  to  have     . 
exercised   a  deeper  and   more   permanent  influence  upon  the   / 
literature  and  modes  of  thinking  of  our  age,  than  any  of  the  / 
great  poets  who   lived  and  wrote  during  the  first  quarter  of/ 
the  present  century."     And  that  influence,  we  may  be  sure,  was/ 
mainly  philosophical,  mainly  ethical,  and  it  fell  in  an  age  which 
5  needed  it. 

"  He,  too,  upon  a  wintry  clime 

Had  fallen — on  this  iron  time 

Of  doubts,  disputes,  distractions,  fears. 

He  found  us  when  the  age  had  bound 

Our  souls  in  its  benumbing  round." 

Every  age,  probably,  thinks  its  round  benumbing,  but  certainly 
doubt  and  fear  are  far  from  Wordsworth  ;  and  it  must  be  a  fatal 
numbness  which  does  not  disappear  under  his  touch. 

More  than  half  a  century  has  passed  since  Wordsworth  died, 
and  during  that  time  criticism  of  the  best  kind  has  been  doing 
its  slow  and  steady  work  on  his  reputation.  We  may  take  note 
of  some  of  that  work,  and  estimate  its  general  result. 
I  In  anticipation,  we  may  perhaps  say  that  the  general  result 
has  been  to  define  Wordsworth's  greatness,  and  to  merge  his 
philosophical  and  ethical  in  his  aesthetic  and  literary  value.  His 
greatness  was  assured  before  the  close  of  his  life  ;  as  to  that 
criticism  had  decided  with  Coleridge  and  Wilson  against  Jeffrey 
and  the  scorners.     But  it  remained  to  estimate  and  analyze  it ; 


330  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

it  remained,  in  particular,  to  show  it  as  poetic  greatness,  and  not  >-.;: 
as  merely  ethical   and   didactic  profitableness.     The  "doubts,  )^ii 
disputes,  distractions,  fears  "  of  the  mid-century  tended  to  make  : 
Wordsworth  seem  mainly  a  teacher.    If  he  is  to  stand  as  a  great   ' 
poet,  he  must  be  shown  as  an  artist  primarily  giving  "  pleasure,"    . 
and  only  secondarily  as  doing  good. 

Skilful  and  reverent  hands  have  been  at  work  on  the  task.  :. 
Wordsworth,  as  Matthew  Arnold  said,  "  has  brought  luck  to  his 
critics  "  ;  they  have  praised  him  so  well,  and  so  worthily  enhanced 
their  critical  reputation  by  his  means.  Perhaps  the  first  of  the 
band  to  deserve  mention  is  John  Campbell  Shairp,  the  Scottish  . 
Professor  of  Poetry  at  Oxford  between  1877  and  1887,  a  fine 
critic,  and,  in  spirit  and  tendency,  one  of  the  most  Wordsworthian 
of  poets.  Shairp,  born  in  18 19,  was  old  enough  to  remember 
vividly  various  ups  and  downs  of  Wordsworth's  reputation  ; 
he  could  remember  his  rivalry  with  Byronism  ;  his  advance  to 
the  fulness  of  fame  in  which  he  died.  He  was  acutely  conscious 
also  of  a  reaction  which  followed  his  death — a  reaction  which  it 
would,  perhaps,  be  more  accurate  to  speak  of  as  an  eclipse. 
For  in  the  'fifties  and  'sixties  Tennyson  loomed  so  large,  and 
attracted  so  swiftly  and  so  widely,  that  his  predecessor  in  the 
laurel  was  inevitably  obscured.  Moreover,  these  were  years 
when  Browning  was  in  his  slow  and  remote  ascendant,  influencing 
selecter  spirits  whom  Wordsworth  might  have  satisfied.  Such 
obscuration  was  really  in  Wordsworth's  favour ;  he  never  has 
been,  he  never  will  be,  popular  as  Tennyson  and  even  Browning 
have  been  popular  ;  and  the  preoccupation  of  poetry-readers 
with  them  has  enabled  him  to  take  his  place  quietly  among  the 
classics.  But  to  Shairp  the  neglect  of  Wordsworth  seemed  an 
evil  si^n,  an  indication  of  an  "excitement-craving,  unmedita- 
tive  age." 

Nothing,  in  any  case,  could  have  been  better  than  the  way 
in  which  the  critic  framed  his  apologia.  He  at  once  seized  and 
kept  the  right  point  of  view  from  which  to  estimate  Wordsworth  ; 
he  showed  him,  neither  as  an  eccentric  experimenter  in  poetic 
style,  nor  as  an  ethical  teacher,  but  as  a  great  imaginative  poet, 
a  revealer  of  that  inner  truth  of  things,  which  is  their  beautiful 
significance  for  poetry.  Such  a  passage  as  the  following  showed 
what  was  a  new  insight  into  Wordsworth  when  it  was  written, 
an   insight  without  which  a  true  criticism  of  him  cannot  be 


FAME  331 

ttempted.     "  There  are  many  now  in  middle  life,  who  look 

ack  to  the  time  of  their  boyhood  or  early  youth,  when  Words- 

/orth  first  found   them,  as  a  marked  era  in   their  existence. 

rhey  can  recall,  it  may  be,  the  very  place  and  the  hour,  when, 

.s  they  read  this  or  that  poem  of  his,  a  new  light,  as  from 

leaven,  dawned  suddenly  within  them.     The  scales  of  custom 

Iropped  from  their  eyes,   and  they  beheld  all  nature  with  a 

plendour  upon  it,  as  of  the  world's  first  morning.    The  common 

ights  and  sounds  of  earth  became  other  than  they  were.     The 

eart  leapt  up  to  the  white  cirrhi  clouds,  and  looked  on  the 

sarly  stars  of  evening  with  a  young  wonder,  not  felt  before. 

Man,  too,  and  human  life,  cleared  of  the  highway  dust,  came 

home  to  them  more  intimately,  more  engagingly,  more  solemnly, 

than    before.      For   their   hearts   were   touched   by   the  poet's 

creative  finger,  and  new  springs  of  thought,  tenderer  wells  of 

feeling,  broke  from  beneath  the  surface.     And  though  time  and 

custom  may  have  done  much  to  dim  the  eye  and  choke  the 

feelings  which  Wordsworth  once  unsealed,   no  time  can  ever 

efface  the  remembrance  of  that  first  unveiling,  nor  destroy  the 

grateful  conviction  that  to  him  they  owe  a  delicate  and  inward 

service,  such  as  no  other  poet  has  equally  rendered." 

In  this  "  delicate  and  inward  "  utterance,  put  forth  as  a  modest 
record  of  personal  experience,  Shairp  inaugurated  worthily  the 
latest  and  best  Wordsworthian  criticism.  For  what  he  had 
found  in  Wordsworth  was  imagination,  imagination  of  so  high 
!  a  quality  and  so  original  in  its  manifestation  as  to  entitle  him 
I  who  exercised  it  to  a  place  among  great  poets.  Shairp  was 
intensely  religious,  and  exceedingly  sensitive  to  the  ethical  sides 
of  things  ;  but  he  would  have  nothing  to  do  with  such  a  mis- 
reading of  Wordsworth  as  would  make  him  primarily  a  religious 
or  ethical  poet.  For  Shairp  he  was  primarily  a  man  of  imagina- 
tion, though  he  might  not  have  so  phrased  it ;  a  "  vital  soul." 
"  The  vital  soul,"  he  wrote,  "  it  is  a  great  gift,  which,  if  ever  it 
dwelt  in  man,  dwelt  in  Wordsworth.  Not  the  intellect  merely, 
nor  the  heart,  nor  the  imagination,  nor  the  conscience,  nor  any 
of  these  alone,  but  all  of  them  condensed  into  one,  and  moving 
all  together.  In  virtue  of  this  vital  soul,  whatever  he  did  see 
he  saw  to  the  very  core.  He  did  not  fumble  with  the  outside  or 
the  accidents  of  the  thing,  but  his  eye  went  at  once  to  the  quick 
— rested  on  the  essential  life  of  it.     He  saw  what  was  there,  but 


332  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

had  escaped  all  other  eyes.  He  did  not  import  into  the  out- 
ward world  transient  fancies  or  feelings  of  his  own,  *  the  pathetic 
fallacy,'  as  it  has  been  named  ;  but  he  saw  it,  as  it  exists  in 
itself,  or  perhaps  rather  as  it  exists  in  its  permanent  moral 
relations  to  the  human  spirit."  Could  the  action  of  imagination 
be  better  described  or  in  more  general  terms  ?  Here,  indeed,  is 
the  common  platform  on  which  all  the  great  artists  stand.  This 
is  their  power,  their  prerogative  ;  here  is  at  once  their  starting- 
point  and  their  goal.  Sir  Leslie  Stephen,  early  in  the  'seventies, 
devoted  one  of  his  most  thoughtful  essays  to  Wordsworth.  The 
title  of  the  essay,  **  Wordsworth's  Ethics,"  is  significant  of  the 
critic's  point  of  view,  though  it  hardly  defines  the  scope  of 
the  criticism.  Stephen  firmly  grasps  Wordsworth  as  a  philoso- 
pher ;  and  he  admires  him  as  a  moral  teacher.  But  his  essay  is 
mainly  concerned  to  show  the  essential  identity,  or,  at  all  events, 
the  harmonious  co-operation,  of  poetry  and  philosophy,  in  the 
explanation  of  the  world  and  the  guidance  of  conduct.  Unlike 
Sir  Henry  Taylor,  Stephen  found,  and  rejoiced  to  find,  a  system 
of  thought,  or  at  least  materials  lending  themselves  to  system, 
in  Wordsworth.  "  Wordsworth's  poetry,"  Stephen  wrote,  "  speaks 
to  our  strongest  feelings  because  his  speculation  rests  upon  our 
deepest  thoughts.  .  .  .  His  psychology,  stated  systematically,  is 
rational ;  and,  when  expressed  passionately,  turns  into  poetry." 
Matthew  Arnold,  who  was  Shairp's  contemporary  and  friend, 
did  much  for  Wordsworthian  criticism,  though  not  as  much  as 
he  might  have  done.  For,  in  spite  of  early  personal  association 
with  Wordsworth,  in  spite  of  keen  insight  and  considerable 
breadth  of  view,  his  temperament  was  antagonistic  to  Words- 
worth's, and  he  did  not  understand  or  appreciate  him  as  well  as 
he  thought  he  did.  While  he  fully  realized  Wordsworth's  great- 
ness and  his  right  to  a  very  high  place  in  England's  poetic 
hierarchy,  and  while  he  realized  that  it  was  his  poetry,  and  not 
his  mere  morality,  that  set  him  there,  he  spoiled  his  estimate  by 
pooh-poohing  his  philosophy.  He  was  led  to  do  this  emphatically 
by  Leslie  Stephen's  criticism  referred  to  above.  He  put  Words- 
worth's poetry  and  philosophy  in  antithesis  to  one  another  :  the 
poetry,  he  said,  was  reality,  the  philosophy  illusion.  He  took  the 
popular  view  of  Wordsworth's  inequality  ;  he  held  that  the  trans- 
cendent merit  which  he  found  in  him  belonged  only  to  a  fraction 
of    his   work,   a    fraction    from    which    The  Prelude   and    The 


FAME  333 

'xcursion  were  excluded.     But  to  treat  Wordsworth's  poetry 

lus  is  to  subject  it  to  an  indignity,  it  is  to  mangle  it  into 

(ishonour.     Wordsworth  is,  indeed,  strangely  unequal ;  didac- 

cism  in  him  again  and  again  breaks  bounds ;  truth  wearies 

stead  of  delighting  with  its  beauty  ;  inspiration  rubs  shoulders 

th   what    looks   very   like   platitude.      But,    for   all   that,   if 

ordsworth's  philosophy  is  illusion,  his  poetry  is  not  worth 

uch.     If  it  is  a  disservice  to  him  to  reprint  The  Excursion  and 

^he  Prelude^  Jeffrey's  estimate  was  not,  after  all,  so  wide  of  the 

aark.     For,  when  all  due  admission  has  been  made  for  Words- 

/orth's  inequalities  and  lapses,  his  work  remains  a  unity,  and 

nust  be  shown,  must  be  accepted  or  rejected,  as  such.     So  much 

le  claimed  for  it ;  so  much  must  be  granted  him.    If  it  is  refused 

im,  justice  will  not  be  satisfied  by  allowing  to  some  of  his 

)oetry  that  it  has  an  admirable  "criticism  of  life,"  or  "natural 

nagic."     If  Shairp's  words  are  not  true  :  that  "  the  vital  soul 

dwelt  in  Wordsworth ;  not  the  intellect  merely,  nor  the 

leart,  nor  the  imagination,  nor  the  conscience,  nor  any  of  these 

done,  but  all  of  them   condensed   into   one,  and  moving  all 

ogether  ; "  and  if  the  totality  of  Wordsworth's  poetry  is  not  the 

evidence  of  their  truth,  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  Wordsworth  can 

iltimately  stand  near  Shakespeare,  Milton,  and  Shelley  ;  how 

le  can  be  a  great  poet. 

Richard  William  Church,  sometime  Dean  of  St.  Paul's,  was 
ran  eminent  critic  of  Wordsworth,  who  did  not  make  Matthew 
Arnold's  mistake.  Belonging  in  the  main  to  Keble's  school  of 
religious  thought.  Church  felt  no  agnostic  repulsion  to  Words- 
worth's "  sober  certainties,"  to  his  sense  of  the  reality  of  the 
Unseen,  to  his  ever-recurring  ethical  emphasis,  to  the  perfect 
terms  on  which  he  kept  with  religious  ideas  and  phraseology. 
Whatever,  therefore,  he  might  say  about  Wordsworth,  he  was 
quite  certain  not  to  call  his  philosophy  "illusion."  On  the  con- 
itrary,  he  does  not  scruple  to  say,  "Wordsworth  was,  first  and 
'foremost,  a  philosophical  thinker."  Nay,  Dean  Church  came 
very  near  to  praising  him  for  didacticism.  He  fixed  on  a  saying 
of  Wordsworth's  about  himself,  and  gave  it  an  interpretation  of 
his  own.  "  Every  great  poet,"  Wordsworth  said  once,  "  is  a 
teacher  ;  I  wish  either  to  be  considered  as  a  teacher  or  as 
nothing."  Church  conceives  him  to  have  meant  not  that  he  was 
in  any  sense  unpoetic  or  unimaginative,  but  that  he  exercised 


334  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

his  poetic  and  imaginative  powers  under  a  sense  of  practical  r 
responsibility  such  as  one  cannot  attribute  to  many  other  great  [ 
poets  on  an  equality  with,  or  surpassing,  him.     But  Dean  Church  , 
never  forgets  that  his  work  was  poetry ;  and  must  be  tried  by  j 
the  canons  of  poetry,  i.e.  primarily  by  intellectual  and  aesthetic 
canons.     He  finds  in  the  first  Lyrical  Ballads  alone  "  force  and 
originality  of  thought,  vividness  and  richness  of  imagination, 
command   over   the  instrument  of  language,  in  its  purity,  its  to 
beauty,  and  its  majesty."     He  freely  accepts  Wordsworth's  own  lie: 
estimate  of  his  innovations  in  poetry  ;  he  believes  that  the  lowli 
ness  of  his  themes  and  diction  was  the  result  of  imaginative  jic: 
insight,  not  of  affected  puerility.     The  "inflexible  loyalty  of 
truth"  which   he   defines  as  *'the  prime  condition  of  all  his  jtlie 
writings  "  was  loyalty  to  truth  which  "  could  only  be  reached  by 
thought   and   imagination."     In   this  critic's  estimate,  Words- 
worth's harvest  of  truth,  gathered  in  by  width  and  depth  of 
imagination,  supplemented  the  gifts  of  Shakespeare  and  Milton, 
and  was  contributed  to  by  such  writers  as  Thackeray,  Dickens, 
and   George   Eliot     Nor,  with   such   an   estimate,  does  Dean 
Church's  sympathy  with  Wordsworth's  high  morality  blind  him 
to   his   literary  limitations   and  defects.     He  finds  in  him  an 
egotism  which   lowers   him  ;   a   narrowness  which  neutralizes, 
hinders   his    insight ;    a   pompousness  which   spoils   his   style. 
And  he  finally  identifies  himself  with  Coleridge's  reverent  and 
undazzled  appraisement. 

Mr.  Stopford  Brooke,  who  has  done  so  much  towards  the 
better  understanding  of  English  poetry,  has  done  much  towards, 
the  better  understanding  of  Wordsworth.  More,  perhaps,  than 
any  other  critic,  he  has  realized  what  in  him  may  be  called 
mystical,  its  reality  and  its  importance.  The  quasi-personality 
which  Wordsworth  found  in  Nature,  the  unity  of  thought  which 
he  attributed  to  it,  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke  takes  seriously,  and 
shows  as  the  poet's  central  discovery.  He  points  out  that  his 
view  of  Nature  as  pervaded  by  one  living  soul,  though  it  has 
affinities  with  the  view  of  some  Italian  Neo-Platonists  of  the 
Renaissance,  was  quite  new  in  English  poetry.  He  was  "  the 
first  who  loved  Nature  with  a  personal  love." 

The  remainder  of  the  criticism  which  deserves  notice  is 
significant.  For  it  proceeds  from  men  who,  from  one  cause 
or  another,  are  detached  from  moral  prejudice  and  religious 


FAME  335 

repossession  ;  many  of  whom  are  not  ill  disposed  to  toy  with 
he  notion  of  "  art  for  art's  sake,"  and  all  of  whom  are  well 
iware  that  verse  is  not  made  poetry  by  being  enlisted  on  the 
ide  of  religion  and  virtue.  ^ 

Mr.  Swinburne  has  praised  Wordsworth  highly  at  the  expense  ' 
i  Byron,  and  criticized  him  chiefly  in  opposition  to  Matthew 
Arnold,  so  his  estimate  is  too  heavily  seasoned  with  controversy 
o  live  as  a  great  appreciation.  Yet  the  genuine  homage,  which 
le  makes  no  attempt  to  disguise  or  restrain,  paid  by  him  to  a 
Doet  in  all  respects  so  heterogeneous  as  Wordsworth,  is  an 
mportant  sign  of  the  times. 

The  late  Mr.  Frederick  Myers  gave  us,  in  his  monograph  on 
;he  poet,  an  excellent  study  of  Wordsworth,  based  on  the 
ipproving  acceptance,  in  his  main,  of  his  philosophy  of  Nature, 
lis  general  conception  of  poetry,  and  his  imaginative  treatment 
)f  humanity.  As  regards  the  last  point,  Myers  reached  a 
generalization  in  advance,  perhaps,  of  anything  hitherto  asserted 
n  Wordsworth's  praise.  "  We  may  almost  venture  ...  to  assert 
hat  no  writer  since  Shakespeare  has  left  us  so  true  a  picture  of 
he  British  nation."  One  wonders  what  Jeffrey,  Hazlitt,  or,  for 
hat  matter,  Coleridge,  would  have  said  to  such  a  dictum. 

Almost  simultaneously  with  Myers,  Sir  John  Seeley,  in  his  ^^^^  -^ 
Vatural  Rdigion,  linked  Wordsworth  with  Goethe — superficially 
lis  acute  literary  antagonist — as  one  of  the  two  great  poets 
\i\\Q  expounded  and  exhibited  the  ideal  natural  religion,  the 
levotion  and  worship  which  may  be  paid  to  the  Universe,  con-' 
:eived  as  a  unity  or  system  of  inter-relations. 

Mr.  John  Morley's  admiration  is  less  loftily  pitched.  His 
istimate  involves  something  of  a  return  to  the  ethical  respect 
md  gratitude  of  the  mid-nineteenth  century.  Wordsworth's 
)rimary  claim  on  this  critic's  attention  is,  one  can  plainly  see, 
lis  teaching ;  the  process  of  ethical  simplification  and  purifica- 
ion — what  was  best  in  Rousseau  with  none  of  what  was  bad — 
^hich  was  wrought  by  the  austere  revolutionary-conservative 
;nthusiast  of  Grasmere  and  Rydal.  When  he  comes  to  a 
mrely  literary  estimate,  he  falls  back  on  the  time-honoured 
.ntithesis  between  Wordsworth  inspired  and  Wordsworth  un- 
nspired,  and  is  disposed  to  place  him  as  mere  poet,  not  only 
auch  below  the  greatest  classics,  but  considerably  below  some 
►f  his  great  contemporaries.     Yet  it  is  significant  that  he  does 


336  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

not  ultimately  yield  to  the  temptation.  His  last  word  is  that 
Wordsworth  probably  will  itand  below  Shakespeare,  Milton, 
and  Dante,  but  that  he  cannot  be  sure.  After  all  literary 
deductions  have  been  conscientiously  made,  what  remains 
seems  so  great  that  the  critic  must  account  for  it.  He  does  so 
by  fixing  once  more  on  the  ethical  in  Wordsworth,  on  his 
"  direct  appeal  to  will  and  conduct "  as  that  which  places  him 
"on  a  line  just  short  of  the  greatest  of  all  time."  This  moral 
appeal,  Mr.  Morley  holds,  is  made  poetically  ;  it  is  no  system  in 
verse ;  it  stands  or  falls  with  no  religious  or  metaphorical  pre- 
possession ;  it  reaches  us,  often  through  a  fanciful,  sometimes 
through  a  false,  medium.  All  the  same,  it  is  the  appeal  of 
sincerity ;  it  proceeds  from  truthfulness,  from  one  who  saw  and 
knew  things — many  things,  at  least — with  his  own  eyes  and  to 
the  bottom.  So  he  was  able  to  "  bring  the  infinite  into  common 
life,"  and,  by  doing  so,  "  to  assuage,  to  reconcile,  to  fortify." 

From  our  point  of  view,  the  most  important  contribution  to 
Wordsworthian  criticism  is  the  latest,  the  careful  study  of  Pro- 
fessor Walter  Raleigh.  For  here  at  last  we  get  as  complete 
detachment  as  we  can  hope  for ;  here  is  no  party-manifesto ; 
no  halting  between  ethical  approval  and  literary  fault-finding ; 
this  is  the  first  genuine  twentieth-century  reaction  to  Words- 
worth's influence.  The  wheel  has  come  full  circle  ;  and  Words- 
worth is  avenged  of  all  his  adversaries. 

Professor  Raleigh  is  no  **  Wordsworthian "  ;  he  is  as  con- 
scious of  Wordsworth's  shortcomings  as  of  his  successes  ;  but 
he  knows  that,  taken  for  all  in  all,  and  as  he  is,  he  is  a  great 
poet,  whom  it  is  the  business  of  true  criticism  to  expound  on 
the  assumption  of  his  originality,  not  to  judge  according  to 
Aristotelian  or  other  canons.  "Criticism,"  he  tells  us,  "must 
.  .  .  follow  the  poet,  if  he  gives  any  token  of  being  worth  the 
following,  step  by  step,  recreating  his  experiences,  hanging  on 
his  words,  disciplining  itself  to  the  measure  of  his  paces, 
believing  in  him  and  living  with  him."  And  Professor  Raleigh 
ties  himself  to  his  own  rescript ;  he  enters  into  Wordsworth 
with  reverence  and  sympathy,  not  so  much  either  praising  or 
blaming  him,  as  showing  his  method  and  analyzing  his  results. 
He  takes  him  quite  seriously  throughout,  in  his  dealings  with 
Nature  and  in  his  dealings  with  Man,  believing  in  the  genuine- 
ness,  the   reality,   of  what   Wordsworth   found  in   them.     So 


FAME  337 

strongly,  indeed,  does  Professor  Raleigh  believe  in  the  reality 
Df  those  Wordsworthian  assertions  which  many  readers  have 
jhaken  their  heads  over  as  "mystic,"  and  which  even  Mr. 
VEorley  smiles  at  as  mere  play  of  fancy,  that  it  is  perhaps  his 
greatest  discovery  that  Wordsworth  wrote  in  a  "spirit  of 
science."  There  is  a  great  deal  to  make  the  superficial  student 
)f  Wordsworth  think  otherwise  ;  he  seems  to  have  a  quarrel 
ivith  science,  to  regard  it  as  "murdering  to  dissect,"  as  seeing 
^things  "in  disconnection  dull  and  spiritless."  But  Professor 
Raleigh  is  impressed  by  Wordsworth's  famous  saying  that 
'*  Poetry  is  the  impassioned  expression  which  is  in  the  counte- 
nance of  all  Science  "  ;  and  he  concerns  himself  to  show  that 
the  truth  of  the  saying  can  be  proved  out  of  Wordsworth's  own 
work.  Wordsworth's  whole-hearted  delight  in  Nature,  the 
sober  cheerfulness  of  his  hopes  for  the  race,  the  profound  awe 
with  which  he  came  back  from  his  visits  to  the  "  mind  of  Man,'* 
were  quite  untainted  with  that  distaste  for  reality  which  both 
religion  and  art  have  often  felt ;  Wordsworth  faced  reality  fully 
with  no  impulse  either  to  flee  or  to  falsify ;  and  this,  Professor 
Raleigh  reminds  us,  is  the  characteristic  attitude  of  science. 
Poetry  smiles  in  the  eyes  of  science  ;  beauty  is  begotten  of 
truth. 

Wordsworth,  in  Professor  Raleigh's  estimate,  was,  before  all 
things,  a  seer  :  in  his  vision  itself,  and  its  inherent  power,  not  in 
any  morals  drawn  from  it  by  the  poet,  lies  the  moral  force 
which  it  is  impossible  not  to  feel  in  Wordsworth.  It  is  thus  that 
Wordsworth  is  a  teacher  without  being,  in  his  best  work, 
didactic  ;  that  he  is  philosophic  without  forfeiting  poetry.  And 
he  is  not  only  a  seer,  but  an  adventurous  explorer ;  his  imagi- 
nation often  led  him  into  places  beyond  which  there  is  no  foot- 
hold. It  is  in  such  situations  that  he  comes  nearest  to  failure. 
He  pressed  onward  to  a  point  where  speech  fails  and  drops  into 
silence,  where  thought  is  baffled  and  turns  back  upon  its  own 
footsteps.  When  we  read  him  aright,  we  accompany  him  on  his 
great  expeditions  ;  and  are  braced  by  sharing  his  honourable 
retreats.  "  To  know  him  is  to  learn  courage  ;  to  walk  with  him 
is  to  feel  the  visitings  of  a  larger,  purer  air,  and  the  peace  of  an 
unfathomable  sky." 

And  so,  at  the  end  of  our  consorting  with  Wordsworth, 
seeing  him  among   his  friends   and    fellow-workers,  trying  to 


338  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

realize  him  in  his  habit  as  he  lived,  and  to  read  the  features  of 
his  genius,  not  only  in  his  own  writings,  but  in  those  answering 
minds  which  have  felt  him  most  acutely,  we  bear  away,  it  may 
be  hoped,  a  true  image.  We  see  him  set  free,  after  long 
bondage,  from  the  shackles  of  comparison,  and  the  pitiful  tyranny 
of  mockers  and  scorners.  It  does  not  interest  us  to  assert  or 
deny  his  inferiority  to  other  poets,  any  more  than  it  would  to 
assert  or  deny  the  inferiority  of  the  beauty  of  spring  to  the 
beauty  of  autumn,  of  the  pageantry  of  dawn  to  the  pageantry 
of  sunset.  Why  should  we  insult  the  great  brotherhood  of  song 
by  vulgar  reasonings  as  to  which  shall  be  greatest  ?  Enough 
for  us  that  in  that  brotherhood  Wordsworth  has  an  undisputed 
place.  Let  us  compare  him — and  the  more  the  better — with 
Shakespeare,  Milton,  Gray,  Burns,  Shelley,  or  whom  we  will, 
that  we  may,  if  possible,  determine  what  is  his  special  contri- 
bution to  the  riches  of  the  human  spirit.  But  let  us  not  misread 
the  lesson  of  his  unconquerable  solitariness,  his  serene  egoism, 
his  austere  isolation.  They  were  the  result  neither  of  his  great- 
ness nor  of  his  littleness,  but  of  his  individuality.  It  fell  to  him 
to  do — imperfectly,  it  may  be,  and  at  times  almost  repellently — 
a  peculiar  work  for  poetry,  to  exercise  a  daring  contemplative 
and  penetrative  imagination  in  an  age  of  many  revolutions,  with 
the  modern  spirit  developing  at  great  proportionate  speed.  It 
was  work  which  could  be  done  only  in  a  beautiful  and  remote 
place,  sparsely  peopled  with  simple  folk.  The  literary  excite- 
ments of  London,  the  stimulation  of  foreign  scenery  and  races, 
the  convivialities  and  sensualities  from  the  midst  of  which  some 
other  poets  have  somehow  learned  to  deliver  their  message, 
would  have  made  Wordsworth's  message  impossible.  He  had 
many  friends,  and  was  always  glad  to  see  them  ;  but  his  teachers 
and  intimate  companions  could  be  none  other  than  the  stars 
and  the  hills  and  the  waters,  and  those  human  beings,  at  once 
common  and  rare,  who  seemed  to  share  their  elemental  life. 

It  is  Wordsworth's  great  triumph  that  he  has  at  last  per- 
suaded us  to  take  him  substantially  at  his  own  estimate,  and 
precisely  as  he  was.  Early  critics  thought  him  much  of  an 
impostor  ;  whatever  we  may  think  of  him,  w^e  shall  never  again 
think  that.  The  world  which  we  find  in  his  poetry  may  not  be 
the  whole  world,  but  it  is  the  real  world  ;  revealed  to  imagina- 
tion and  reproduced  by  art  such  as  only  great  poets  possess. 


FAME  339 

And  Wordsworth's  narrowness,  his  petulant  and  ungracious 
exclusions,  do  not,  we  now  see,  avail  to  hinder  his  ever  active 
sense  of  the  Universal.  The  simple  people  and  homely  scenes 
with  which  his  verse  concerns  itself  are  chosen  not  for  their 
simplicity  and  homeliness,  but  for  the  transcendent  majesty  and 
awful  beauty,  the  melting  pathos  or  terrifying  tragedy,  which 
his  imagination  found  in  them,  and  of  which  his  poetry 
convinces  us.  Wordsworth  knew  the  world  differently  from 
Shakespeare;  but  it  was  the  same  world,  and  he  knew  it,  in 

(one  sense,  as  well.  And  the  depths  discovered  by  both  poets 
are  equally  unfathomable.  Therefore,  it  is,  we  are  sure  that 
Wordsworth  is  immortal.  Men  will  find  something  fresh  in 
him,  something  vitally  relevant,  in  all  ages. 

We  do  not  vex  ourselves  so  much  with  that  lack  of  unity, 
I  of  homogeneity  in  Wordsworth's  poetry  which  used  to  be 
such  a  stumbling-block.  Whether  by  sifting,  or  by  increased 
tolerance,  we  have  enough  to  provide  us  with  unity  of  im- 
pression and  estimate.  Wordsworth  is  not  only  great  ;  he  is 
also  one.  The  image  no  longer  seems  of  mingled  gold  and 
clay.  There  is  clay,  no  doubt ;  but  it  does  not  deform  as  it 
used  to  do,  and  it  does  not  trouble  us. 

Nor  do  we  now  fall  on  Wordsworth,  as  our  fathers  did,  for 

sacrificing  beauty  to  truth,  beauty  that  delights,  to  truth  that 

edifies.     If  he  could  be  proved  guilty  of  this  charge,  his  claim 

to  be  a  great  poet  could  not  be  sustained.     Even  poets  like 

Dryden  and  Pope  do  not  live  as  poets  by  the  common  sense 

;  which  was  their  truth,  but  by  the  metrical  skill  and  wit  which 

'  were  their  substitutes  for  beauty.     Wordsworth  had   no  such 

,  substitutes   to  fall  back   upon  ;   nor  did   he   need   them.     He 

I  reached  and   rendered  the   beautiful.     His  was   the  quest  on 

which  all  great  poets  are  more  or  less  consciously  bound,  the 

quest  for  the  unity  of  the  Beautiful  and  the  True  ;  and  we  are 

sure  now  that  he  did  not  return  baffled.     We  know  that  he  had 

a  fresh  and  original  vision,  and  we  can  share  it.     He  saw  very 

deep  into   the   life  of  things,  and  in  its  depth  is  its   beauty. 

Hence  his  serenity,  his  optimism,  his  cheerful  faifh.     His  genius 

had  a  transfiguring  touch,  not,  as  we  used  to  think,  a  dulling 

one.     He  used  the  artist's  loftiest  power  when    he    chose   the 

weak   things  of  the  world  to   confound  the  things  that  were 

mighty,  when  he  showed  what  less  enlightened   eyesight   had 


340  WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

taken  for  a  wilderness  to  be  blossoming  as  the  rose.  Nature 
and  Man ;  the  poet  has  essentially  no  other  theme.  Yet  each 
poet  has  his  own  message  about  them,  his  own  chosen  point  of 
view  from  which  he  regards  them.  Wordsworth's  point  of  view 
was  that  of  the  artist  who  is  also  a  philosopher  and  a  prophet, 
in  some  sense  a  priest.  Rightly  understood,  he  can  never  seem 
alien,  either  from  the  religious,  or  from  those  who  stop  short  of 
religion.  The  themes  of  his  verse,  the  sights  and  sounds,  the 
things  and  the  persons  and  thoughts  that  engage  him,  are 
grounded  on  the  most  positive  and  reasonable  reality.  And 
yet  we  see  on  them  the  stamp  which  men  set  on  the  foreheads 
of  angels  ;  and  the  service  for  which  he  marshals  them  is 
Divine. 


APPENDIX 

REFERENCES 
of  some  of  the  principal  passages  quoted  in  the  text — 

Page  II.  Many  were  the  thoughts,  etc.    Prelude,  Bk.  i.,  70-74. 

„     18.  To  place  hz?nself,  etc.     Guide  to  the  Lakes  (Frowde,  1906),  22-24. 

„     20.  Many  are  the  notes,  etc.     Excursion,  Bk.  ii.,  696-723. 

„     21.  A  step,  etc.     lb.  ii.,  829-876. 

5,     25.  Thou  look'st  upon  me,  etc.    Address  from  the  Spirit  of  Cocker- 
mouth  Castle.     Sonnet  of  1833. 

„     28.  The  sighs  which  Matthew,  etc.     Matthew. 

„     28.  The  eye — //  ca?inot,  etc.     The  Tables  Turned. 

„    31.  There  was  a  Boy,  Qic.    The  poem  is  so  called.    Pdso  Prelude,  v., 

364- 
„    32.     While  on  the  perilous,  etc.    Prelude,  i.  336-339. 
„     32.    Far  above,  etc.     lb.  i.,  371,  372. 
))     33'     Wisdom  and  Spirit,  etc.     lb.  i.,  401-414.    Also  as  separate  poem 

called   "Influence  of  Natural   Objects   in  Calling  forth  and 

Strengthening  the  Imagination  in  Boyhood  and  Early  Youth." 
J)    33-     Oft  amid,  ttc.     lb.  i.,  581-588. 
„     35.     Those  hallowed,  Qtc.     lb.  i.,  551-558. 
„     35.    For  the  discerning,  etc.     From  The  Recluse. 
„     36.     Gentle  agitations,  etc.     lb.  Prelude,  298-301. 
„     36.     An  auxiliar  light,  etc.     lb.  ii.,  368-376. 
„     36.     The  snow-white  church,  etc.     lb.  iv.,  21,  22. 
J3     37*     When  first  I  made,  etc.     lb.  iv.,  137-152. 
„     37.     ^Mid  a  th7'07ig,e\.c.     lb.  i v.,  309-319. 
„     38.     To  the  brifn,  etc.    333-337- 
„    45.    I  cannot  paifit,  tic.    Lifies  Composed  a  few  7niles  above  Tintern 

Abbey. 


342  ^VORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 

Page    46.     March  firmly,  qXz.     P?'^/z/^^,  x.,  511-589. 

„       50.     I  saw  her,  etc.     ^''  She  was  a  phantom  of  delight^'' 

„       51.     She  whispered  still,  eiz.     Pr^/w^^,  xi.,  345-347. 

„       51.     But  for  thee,  tie.     lb.  xiv,,  247-256. 

„       53.     For  the  Man  who,  tic.    Ex'cursio7t,\w.,  i2oZ-i2?.(). 

„       53.     The  Being,  etc.     lb.  iv.,  1 264-1 274. 

,,       65.     I  heard,  etc.     Lines  writte?t  in  Early  Spring. 

„      66.     Nay,  traveller,  rest !  etc.     Lines  left  upon  a  seat  in  a  yew-tree. 

„       73.     Thus  fear  relaxed,  etc.     Prel^ide,  xiv.,  2S2-201. 

„       y^'     That  su7n7ner,  etc.     lb.  xiv.,  395-413. 

„      82.    I  mourned  with  thousands,  etc.    At  the  Grave  of  Burns,  iSo^. 

„     120.     A  plague,  etc.     Written  iti  Germany. 

„     121.     I  kissed  his  cheek,  etc.    Address  to  the  Scholars  of  the  Village 

School  of . 

,,     124.     0  there  is  blessi7ig,  etc.     Prelude,  i.  1-3. 

„     124.     To  the  ope?i  fields,  etc.     lb.  i.  50-54. 

„     126.    A  narrow  girdle,  etc.     Poems  oft  the  Na7ning  of  Places.    No.  4. 

„     127.     As  beautiful  to  thought,  etc.     The  Recluse. 

„     128.     0 71  Natures  i7ivitatio7i,  etc.     lb. 

„     132.     071 77ie,  etc.     The  Sparrow's  Nest. 

„     132.     While  I  a7n  lyi7ig,  etc.     To  the  Cuckoo. 

1)     133-     Would' st  thou    be    happy,  etc.     The    Redbreast   chasing   the 

Biitterfiy. 
„     134.     Se7it  forth  S7ich  sallies,  etc.     Poe77is  on  the  Namiftg  of  Places. 

No.  I. 
„     134.     The  Emine7tce,  etc.     lb.  No.  3. 

„     135.    A  cloistral  place,  etc.     Poe77is  07i  the  Na77ii7ig  of  Places.     No.  6. 
„     142.     Never  su7i  07i  livi7ig creature,  etc.   Stanzas  writte7i  in  my  Pocket 

Copy  of  Tho77iso7is  Castle  of  Itidolence. 
„     148.     Ifi  the  choir,  etc.     Coleridge:     To  a   Gefitlema7i;    beginning, 

"  Friend  of  the  Wise  !  and  Teacher  of  the  Good  !  " 
„     149.     Of  thee,  etc.    Prelude,  xiv.,  276,  etc. 
„     150.     To  fill,  etc.     The  Recluse. 
„     153.     He  had  felt,  etc.    Excursio7i,  l,  igi-2iS. 
„     155.     "  Ah/  why,"  etc.     lb.  ix.,  36-47. 

„     159.     In  the  shady  grove,  etc.   Poe77is  ofi  the  Na77ii7ig  of  Places.    No.  6. 
„     163.    Here  did  we  stop,  etc.    Elegiac  Verses  i7i  Me7noryof  my  brother^ 

Joh7i  Wordsworth. 
5,     171.     She  came,  no  77iore,  etc.     Prelude,  xiv.,  268-274. 
„     172.    ^Tis  a  fruitless  task,  etc.     To  a  Pai7tterj  beginning,  "  All  praise 

the  likeness  by  thy  skill  portrayed." 
„     173.     O,  my  Beloved,  etc.     07i  the  Sa77te  Subject. 


■tnt. 


% 


04 


APPENDIX  348 

Page  238.  He  wrote  three  poems.  The  second  of  the  three,  from  which  the 
verses  on  p.  239  are  quoted,  was  written  many  years  after 
the  visit  to  Dumfries,  though/^//,  Wordsworth  tells  us,  at  the 
time. 

„  268.  /  have  felt,  etc.  Lmes  composed  a  few  miles  above  Tintern 
Abbey. 

„     269.     How  exquisitely,  etc.     The  Recluse. 

„  277.  Great  God!  etc.  Sonnet  beginning,  "  The  world  is  too  much 
with  us." 

„     298.     The  Aniechapel,  etc.     Prelude,  iii.,  60-63. 


INDEX 


Abbotsford,  246,  247 
Addison,  Joseph,  48 
Alfoxden — 
Description  of,  65,  66,  67,  242 
Cottle's  visit  to,  79 
Coleridge's  visits  to,  65-91 
Thelwall's  visits  to,  68,  90 
Wordsworth  at,  65-91,  124,  142,  165 
Dorothy's  influence,  129,  139,  141 
Incidents  in  life  recorded  in  poetry 

of  that  time,  68,  91 
Recollections  of,  in  Germany,  120, 
123 
Allan  Bank — 
De  Quincey  at,  204-205 
North  at,  252 

Wordsworth  at,  189-194,  203-207 
[/Alfred,  King,  39 
lAmbleside,  centre  of  Lake  district,  19, 
20,  23,  25,  126  ;  Coleridge's  family  at, 
199 ;  Quillinan  at,  293  ;  Hartley 
Coleridge  schoolmaster  at,  296 ;  H. 
Martineau  settled  at,  298 ;  otherwise 

^  mentioned,  125,  141,   143,   202,  254, 
300,  301,  306 
America,  *' Pantisocratic"  plan  of  emi- 
¥    gration  to,  42-43 

Amiens,  Peace  of,  183-187 
If  Anderson,  Dr.,  284 
Apennines,  248 
Armathwaite,  47 
i  Arnold,  Matthew,  criticism  by,  of  Shelley, 
269,  270 ;  of  Wordsworth,  332-333  ; 
view    opposed    by    Swinburne,    335 ; 
knowledge  of  Wordsworth,  321  ;    at 


Oxford,  290  ;  on  Wordsworth's  critics, 

330 
Arnold,  Dr.  Thomas,  home  of,  291,  298  : 

Wordsworth's  intimacy  with,  306,  307  ; 

death  of,  307  ;  otherwise  mentioned, 

12,  126 
Arnold,  Mrs.  Thomas,  313 
Arrochar,  237 
Ashburner,  Thomas,  140 
Ashby-de-la-Zouch,  157 
Askrigg,  128 
Atkinson,  309 
Awe,  Loch,  239 


B 


Baillie,  Joanna,  305 

Bartholomew,  John,  66 

Barton  Fell,  136 

Bassenthwaite,  23 

Bath,  40,  43 

Beaumont,  Lady,  Wordsworth's  letters 
to,  2,  157 

Beaumont,  Sir 'George,  presents  Apple- 
thwaite  to  Wordsworth,  157  j  founder 
of  National  Gallery,  158;  Words- 
worth's letter  to,  161  ;  death  of,  158  ; 
otherwise  mentioned,  165,  286 

Belle  Isle,  Windermere,  293 

Birmingham,  Lloyd  at,  58,  59,  157 

Blackwood,  William,  255 

Blake,  4,  82 

Blakesware,  59,  60 

Blea  Tarn,  "  Solitary's  "  cottage  near, 
20 

Blencathara,  23,  24  ;  Lamb  and  Mary  at, 
222 


346 


WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 


Bolton,  Colonel,  256,  257 
Bootle,  174,  175 
Borrowdale,  19,  23 
Boswell's  son  with  Wordsworth,  1 15 
Bowles,  Caroline  (Mrs.  Southey),  1 16 
Bowles,  Rev.  W.  Lisle,  94 
Brathay,  22 
Bridgnorth,  199 

Bridgwater,   description   of,   39  ;    other- 
wise mentioned,  55,  198,  217 
Brimley,  George,  329 
Bristol,  Burke  member  for,  41  ;  capital 
of  West,  40,  41  ;  Coleridge  at,  42,  43, 
54>  55»  S^>  208  ;   Cottle's  home,  41  ; 
Hmiiphry  Davy  at,  156;    De  Quincey 
at,  198,  199,  203,  204  ;  Southey  at,  41, 
42,  43,  54,  56  J   Thelwall's  birthplace, 
67  ;  Wordsworth  at,  with  Dorothy,  55, 
91  ;  otherwise  mentioned,  44,  217 
Brompton,  170 
Brooke,  Stopford,  on  "Dove  Cottage," 

131  ;  Wordsworth's  critic,  334 
Browning,  Elizabeth  Barrett,  290 
Browning,    Robert,    15,    147,   166,    178, 

289,  290,  330 
Bryder,  Miss,  293 
Bunsen,  289 
Burke,  Edmund,  40,  41 
Burnett,  Robert,  43,  56 
Burns,  Robert — 
Death  of,  82 

Gray,  Shenstone,  and  Thomson,  admi- 
ration for,  82 
Lamb's  estimate  of,  94 
Wordsworth's  love  for,  10  ;  tribute  to, 

82,  Ss  J  estimate  of,  10,  238,  239 
Otherwise  mentioned,  4,  82,  83,  136 
Buttermere,  19,  24,  222 
Byron,  Lord — 

Estimates    of — by    Lamb,    258 ;    by 
Jeffrey,  316 ;    by   North,  325 ;    by 
Swinburne,  335 
Fame  of,  289 

Greece,  sympathy  with,  262 
Literary  connections  of — 
Coleridge,  with,  144 
' '  Lake  "   school,  condemnation   of, 

96,  97 
Scott,  criticism  of,  93 
Southey,  attack  on,  97  ;  jealousy  of, 

113 
Wordsworth,  satirical  treatment  of, 


Byron,  Lord — continued 

10  ;  criticism  of,  258  ;  accused  c 
plagiarism  by,   261  ;    comparisoi 
with,  261,  262  ;  no  comparison  ii 
later  years,  328 
Orientalism  of,  no 
Poetry  of — 

Character  of,  261,  263 
Popularity  of,  108,  316,  326,  329 
Romanticism  of,  6,  93  ;  his  attack  on 
,     Romanticism,  93 
^  Style  of,  261-263 
Otherwise  mentioned,  4,  278 

C 

Calais,  170,  186,  222 

Calvert,  Raisley,  visited  by  Wordsworth 
47,  50 ;  death  of,  and  bequest  t( 
Wordsworth,  48,  49 

Calvert,  William,  47,  50 

Cambridge — 

Brimley,  George,  at  Trinity,  329 
Byron's  popularity  at,  326 
Coleridge  at,  42,  43,  60,  326 
Wordsworth — at   St.  John's,    17,   26 
44,  46,  213  ;  his  nephew  Master  o 
Trinity,    24 ;    his    friends,    48,    49 
honours,  289 

Camoens,  185,  293 

Canning,  George,  256,  257 

Cardiganshire,  80 

Carlisle,  135,  232,  238 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  description  of  Southej 
by,  99-105  ;  on  Coleridge's  weakness 
144;  wedding  journey  of,  170 
description  of  Mrs.  Wordsworth  by 
172;  sympathy  of,  with  revolutionar) 
ideas,  301  ;  description  of  Words  wort! 
by>  3O3~305  »  nieeting  with  him,  302 

304 
Carlyle,  Mrs.,  102 
Cartmell,  46 
Champion,  Richard,  41 
Chatterton,  Thomas,  z^,  136 
Chaucer,  197,  259 
Christ's  Hospital,  59 
Church,  Dean,  333,  334 
Cintra — 

Convention  of,  190  — Wordsworth' 
horror  at,  19 1  ;  his  pamphlet  on 
19s,  204 

Southey  at,  50 


INDEX 


347 


*orti 


iJlarkson,    friend  of  Wordsworth,    156, 
157  J    opponent   of  slave  trade,    156 ; 
description   of  Mrs.  Wordsworth  by, 
173;    caters   for  Lamb   and  Mary  at 
Dove  Cottage,  223 
31arkson,  Mrs.,  156,  157,  223 
Clevedon,  50 
Clovenford,  240 
Cocker,  24 
Cockermouth,  23,  24,  46,  125;  '*nest" 

in  garden  at,  132 
Coker,  19 
Coleorton,  157,  244 

Coleridge,  Derwent,  birth  of,  142  ;  child- 
hood   at    Greta   Hall,    105  ;    visit   to 
Wordsworth,   199  ;    with  Wordsworth 
at  Hartley's  death,  297 
Coleridge,  Hartley,  birth  of,  54 ;  child- 
hood at  Nether  Stowey,  55  ;  at  Greta 
Hall,    105  ;    visits   Wordsworth,    199, 
295  ;  Wordsworth's  love  for,  295-298  ; 
career  of,   296,  297  ;    death  of,   297  ; 
H.  Martineau's  opinion  of,  298 
Coleridge,  Sir  John  Taylor,  291 
Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor — 
Ancestry  of,  42 

Appearance  of,  42,  100 ;  described  by 
Dorothy  Wordsworth,  55  ;  by  De 
Quincey,  198 
Career  of — birth,  42;  at  Christ's 
Hospital,  59 ;  at  Cambridge  (Jesus 
College),  42,  43,  326  ;  enlists,  42  ; 
visits  Southey  at  Oxford,  42  ;  Welsh 
tour,  42  ;  at  Bristol — plans  emigra- 
tion scheme,  42,  43, 46  ;  engagement, 
43,  60  ;  walks  in  Somerset,  43,  56  ; 
takes  degree  at  Cambridge,  43  ;  in 
London,  43  ;  marriage,  43,  92,  104  ; 
at  Clevedon,  50  ;  at  RedcHffe,  54- 
55  ;  plans  "  Watchman,"  54  ;  birth 
of  Hartley,  54  ;  visit  to  Racedown, 
55,  58  ;  at  Nether  Stowey,  55-91  ; 
visit  to  Alfoxden,  67-91  ;  "  Ancient 
INIariner  "  published  in  "  Lyrical 
Ballads,"  73,  77-81,  91  ;  at  Ham- 
burg, 91,  119;  at  Ratzeburg  and 
Gottingen,  11 9- 124;  at  the  Lakes, 
125  ;  at  Greta  Hall,  ii,  23,  142  ;  in 
Malta,  198  ;  separation  from  his  wife, 
204 ;  at  Highgate,  208  ;  Scotch  tour 
with  Wordsworth  and  Dorothy,  237  ; 
at  Fox  How,  291-292  ;  death  of,  208 


Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor — contimied 
Characteristics  of — 

Affection,  58,  62,  143,  145 
Critical  faculty,  176,  177,  334 
Despondency,  145,  148,  237 
Irresolution  and  vagrancy,  142-145, 

237 

Irresponsibility  and  neglect  of  home 
duties,  65,  105,  142-145,  204 
Criticisms  by — of  Wordsworth,  3,  183, 

219,  322-324,  329,  335  ;  of  Lamb, 

64,  65  ;  of  Southey,  98 
Estimates  of^by  Wordsworth,  9,  10, 

233,  235,  258,  263  ;  by  Lamb,  61  ; 

by  Carlyle,    144 ;   by  De  Quincey, 

198,  213  ;  by  Blackioood's  Magazine^ 

255 
Family  of,  65,  105,  142-I45,  199,  204, 

291,  295-298 
Literary  connections  and  friendships 
with — 

Beaumont,  Sir  George,  157 

Blackwood,  255,  272 

Byron,  144 

Carlyle,  144 

Cottle,  41,  79 

Davy,  Humphry,  156 

De  Quincey,  198,  199-203 

Lamb,  60,  66,  94,  217,  218,  222- 
223 

Lloyd,  Charles,  58,  157 

North,  252 

Poole,  Thomas,  56-58 

Southey,  42,  54,  56,  60,  92,  94,  98 ; 
decline  of  friendship,  54,  114 

Thelwall,  90 

Wordsworth,  54-55,  91-92,  114, 125, 
133,  141-149,  233,  248,  297,  325, 
326 ;  joint  work  with  "  Lyrical 
Ballads,"  7,  76-91,  93,  142,  219, 
317  ;  first  line  of  "  We  are  Seven," 
8;    plan  of  "Ancient  Mariner," 

77 

Wordsworth,    Dorothy,   66,   70-76, 

91,  141-145 
Politics  of,  42,  56,  68,  90,  319 
Publications  of — 

*'  Biographia  Literaria,"  272 
"Christabel,"  79,  144,  I45 
"Lyrical  Ballads,"  67,  76-91,  142, 
219 
Religion  of,  44,  54,  57 


848 


WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 


Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor — continued 
Reputation  of,   9,    10,  94,  233,  235, 

258 
Style  of — inferior  to  Dorothy  Words- 
worth,  72 ;    as  nature  painter,  64, 
145-147 ;   unequal   in   versification, 
144  J  great  imaginative  powers,  147 

Coleridge,  Sarah  (Sarah  Fricker),  engage- 
ment of,  43  ;  marriage,  43,  92,  104  ;  at 
Greta  Hall,  199,  200,  201,  203 ;  receives 
De  Quincey,  203  ;  visits  Wordsworth, 
I43>  199  ;  neglected  by  her  husband, 
60,  142,  143,  145  ;  jealousy  of  Dorothy, 
145  ;  separated  from  her  husband,  204  ; 
deserted,  114,  208 

Coleridge,  Sara,  childhood  of,  at  Greta 
Hall,  105,  114  ;  with  de  Quincey,  199  ; 
visit  to  Wordsworth,  200 

Colston,  Edward,  40 

Congreve,  William,  6 

Coniston,  18,  143,  197 

Coniston  Fells  and  Water,  20,  26 

Cookson,  Anne  (Wordsworth's  mother), 
24 

Cookson,  Canon,  46,  90 

Cottle,  Joseph,  41,  43,  79 

Cowley,  Abraham,  219 

Cowper,  William,  3,  105  ;  scorned  by 
Wordsworth,  8  ;  Wordsworth's  sup- 
posed imitation  of,  318 

Crabb  Robinson,  Henry,  225,  305,  311  ; 
Dorothy  Wordsworth's  letter  to,  231  ; 
Wordsworth  criticized  by,  289,  305, 
316,  325 

Crabbe,  George,  289 

Crackanthorp  of  Newbiggen  Hall,  24 

Crewkerne,  49 

Crosthwaite,  Southey's  grave  at,  92,  104, 
116 

Crummock-water,  19 

Cumberland,  11,  19,  20,  64 


Dampier,  216 

Dante,    sonnets    of,    185  ;    Wordsworth 

compared  with,  313,  336 
Darwin,  Charles,  204 
Davy,  Humphry,  156,  243 
Davy,  Dr.  John,  309 


Dawson,    EHza    (Mrs.    Fletcher),    298-   [ 

309 
De  Quincey,  Thomas — 

Career  of — birth  in  Manchester,  195 ; 
at    Manchester     Grammar    School, 
195  ;   in  Wales,  B^th  and  London, 
195  ;  at  Oxford,  195,  197  ;  tour  in 
Lake    District,     197  ;     at     Nether 
Stowey,  198,  199  ;  first  meeting  with, 
Wordsworth,  200  ;  at  Dove  Cottage, 
130,  131,  203  ;  at  Allan  Bank,  204- 
205  ;  tenant  of  Dove  Cottage,  205- 
213  ;  marriage  and  home  life,  206-] 
207  ;  at  Middle  Temple,  207  ;  inter- 
view with  North  about  Blackwood' i 
ATagazme,      207 ;      publication     oi\ 
"  Confessions  of  an  Opium-Eater,' 
207 ;       editor      of       Westmorelam 
Gazette^  21 1  ;    family  removal  from! 
Dove   Cottage  to  Edinburgh,  21 
212 
Characteristics  of — 
Affection,  206 
Desultoriness  in  work,  197 
Emotionalism,  200,  209 
Irregularity  in  habits,  208,  210 
Opium  habit,  207 
Shyness,  209,  211 
Waywardness,  195 
Criticisms  by,  of — 
Coleridge,  200 
Fielding,  213 
Keats,  212 
Le  Sage,  213 
Smollett,  213 
Southey,  203,  213 

Wordsworth,  183,  200  ;  enthusiastic 
admiration,    196,    197,   250,    315, 
322  ;    later  estimation,  213,  214- 
216  ;    on   his   fame,   12,    17  ;    on 
"The  Excursion,"  215 
Literary   connections  and   friendships 
with — 
Coleridge,  198,  203 
North,  252,  253 
Southey,  100  ;  decline  of  friendship, 

114 
Wordsworth,  198,  200-204,  282  ;  in 
Wordsworth's    circle,     195,    219, 
300;   decline  of  friendship,   208- 
211 
Wordsworth,  Mrs.,  173,  200 


INDEX 


349 


e  Quincey,  i:\ioxa2iS— contimted 
Literary  connections  v^ixh—contimied 
Wordsworth,  Dorothy,  200, 202-204, 
209,  211 
Publications  of — 

"  Confessions  of  an  English  Opium 

Eater,"  207,  211 
"Recollections,"  213 
Style  of,  4,  93.  i95.  200 
)e  Quincey,  Margaret,  206,  207,  211,  212 
)efoe,  Daniel,  319 

)erwent,  the,  19,  23,  24,  104;  ^^ords- 
worth's  childhood  near,  25,  139  5  ^^^ 
love  for,  23  ;  romance  of  Cockermouth, 

27 

Derwentwater,  11,  23,  126,  I45.  222 

Devon,  50 
Dewey,  Orville,  14 
Dickens,  Charles,  334 
Dorset,    17,   39,   4o;    Wordsworth   and 
■^Dorothy    in,    49-55  J     ''Margarets 
story  heard  in,  54 
Douglas,  Lord,  240 

Dove  Cottage,  description  of,  180,  189  ; 
De  Quincey's  life  at,  204-212  ;  Charles 
and  T^Iary  Lamb  at,  in  Wordsworth's 
absence,  223;  Scott's  visit  to,  243; 
Wordsworth  at,  128-174,  184,  189 
Dryburgh,  241 

Dryden,  John,  5,  8,  175,  176,  259 
Duddon,  River,  18,  22,  287 
Dumfries,  238,  295 
Dunmail  Raise,  22,  134 
Dunsink,  299 


E 

Easedale,  22,  I34,  309,  3 10 

Edinburgh,  de  Quincey  in,  207,  211,  212  ; 
Christopher  North's  life  in,  249-257  ; 
Wordsworth's  and  Dorothy's  visit  to, 

239 
Edmonton,  231 
Eildon  Hills,  247 
Eldon,  Lord,  152 
EHot,  George,  334 
Elleray,  256,  257 
Ellisland,  238 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  301,  302 
Enfield,  231 
Ennerdale,  18 
Esk,  18 


Esthwaite,    26;    boating  scene    at,   32; 

influence  of,  on  Wordsworth's  love  of 

nature,  27,  28,  34,  36,  125 
Exmoor,  39 


Fairfax,  Edward,  202 

Fairfield,  association  of,  with  Wordsworth, 

22,  125,  163,  248,  279,  307 
Farringford,  294 

Fenwick,  Isabella,  connection  of  Henry 
Taylor,  102,  311  ;  visits  Carlyle,  102- 
103  ;  intimate  with  Southey,  102-103  ; 
with  Wordsworth,  310,  S"  *,  influence 
over  Taylor,  31 1  ;   better  to  Taylor  on 
Wordsworth,  312  ;   at  Rydal  Mount, 
312  ;  death  of,  312 
Ferniehurst,  242 
Fielding,  213 
Flatholm,  39 
Fletcher,  Archibald,  309 
Fletcher,  Mrs.  (Eliza  Dawson),  at  Lanc- 
rigg,    298-309;     her     impressions    of 
Wordsworth,  309 
Fletcher,  Margaret,  309-311 
Fletcher,  Mary.     See  Richardson,  Lady 
Forncett,  46 

Fox,     Charles      James,      Wordsworth  s 
"Hymn"  on,  15  ;  his  admiration  for, 
134,    135  J    his    introduction    to,    by 
Rogers,  295 
Fox  How,  Dr.  T.  Arnold's  home,  12, 
298  ;  Wordsworth's  intimacy  with,  306, 
307  \  J.  T.  Coleridge's  visit  to,  291  ; 
Julius  Hare's  visit  to,  299 
France,   17,  42,   190;    influence  of,  on 
Wordsworth,  14,  i5,  45,  46,  9°,  ^^3, 
187,    193,    301,  303  ;  l^is  visit  to,  44, 
46, 186 ;  account  of,  in  "  Prelude,    1 5  j 
(See  also  Calais) 
Fricker,  Edith.     See  Southey,  Mrs. 
Fricker,  Mary,  engaged  to  Lovell,  43 
Fricker,  Sarah.     See  Coleridge,  Sarah 


Gallow  Hill,  170 

Galloway  Hills,  82 

Garsdale,  171  ^^ 

Germany,  Coleridge's  visit  to,  91,  IS^  ; 
visit  wasted,  142  ;  Wordsworth  s  like- 
ness   to    contemporary    metaphysical 


350 


WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 


poets  of,  34 ;  desire  for  independence 
for,    193  ;   Wordsworth's   visit  to,  91, 
118-124,  1S9 
Gibbon,  Edward,  41 
Gillies,  Margaret,  172 
Gladstone,  William  Ewart,  204 
Glaramara,  23 
Glasgow,  250 
Glastonbury  Tor,  67 
Glen  Croe,  238 
Gloucester,  199 

Goethe,  greater  works  of,  ii8  ;  views  of, 
on  Scott  as  novelist,  99  ;  Klopstock's 
opinion  of,  119;  Landor's  opinion  as 
to  Wordsworth's  jealousy  of,  305  ; 
Wordsworth  linked  with,  by  Seeley, 
335  ;  his  attitude  towards,  120,  305  ; 
death  of,  82 
Goldsmith,  3 
Goodrich,  45,  80 

Goslar,  Wordsworth's  visit  to,  1 19-124; 
Dorothy's  influence  at,  129;  "Prelude" 
begun  at,  149 
Gottingen,  119,  124 
Grange,  45 
Grasmere — 

Coleridge's    wife    at,    204 ;    his   son's 

grave  at,  297 
De  Quincey  at,  204,  252;  his  description 

of,  197 
Dorothy's  influence  at,  129  ;  her  journal 

regarding,  139 
Fair  at,  143 

Lamb  and  Mary  at,  221-223 
Situation  of,  127 
Vale  of,  126-128 
View  from,  23 

Wordsworth's  life  at,  ii,  92,  128-175, 
207,  208,  279,  313  ;  his  work  at, 
139  ;  his  children's  death  at,  175, 
280  ;  his  political  interests  at,  183  ; 
settling  at  Allan  Bank,  203 ;  his 
meeting  with  Rogers,  295 ;  his 
funeral,  313 
Otherwise  mentioned,  19,  22,  153,  154, 
170,  199,  226,  263 
Graves,  R.  P.,  299 

Gray,  9,  259,  278  ;  Burns's  admiration  of, 
82  J  Wordsworth's  view  of,  7,  8,  82  ; 
Wordsworth  compared  with,  338 
Great  Gavel,  18 
Greece,  262 


Greenhead  Ghyll,  134 

Greta  Hall,  157,  256,  257  ;  Southey 
home  at,  104  ;  Coleridge's  life  at,  104 
142-145  ;  Coleridge  and  Southey  at 
1 1 ;  Mrs.  Coleridge  alone  at,  204 
Coleridge  family  at  199  ;  visits  to,  b 
Southey,  92,  1 14 ;  Humphry  Davy 
156  ;  De  Quincey,  202  ;  Charles  anc 
Mai-y  Lamb,  222 

Grisdale  Tarn,  163,  166 

Grosvenor,  Southey's  letter  to,  106 


H 


Halifax,  46,  121 

Hamburg,  91,  118,  II9 

Hamilton,     William     Rowan,     Words- 
worth's friendship  with,  298,  299,  300 
his  letter  to,  on  Landor,  305  ;  his  visit 
to,  299 

Hamilton,  Miss,  299 

Hammer  Scar,  134,  198,  199 

Hare,  Julius,  299 

Hawes,  171 

Haweswater,  19 

Hawick,  243 

Hawkshead,  Wordsworth  at  school  at, 
26-36,  125;  his  vacations  at,  36-38; 
dance  near,  37;  his  writings  of,  at 
Goslar,  121,  124 

Hawthornden,  240 

Harz  Mountains,  119,  122 

Haydon  (painter),  friend  of  Wordsworth 
and  Keats,  272,  273,  274  ;  dinner  to 
Wordsworth  given  by,  272-277 

Hayti,  189 

Hazlitt,  William,  as  critic,  176,  319, 
324 ;  as  lover  of  books,  177  ;  as  critic 
of  Wordsworth,  183,  214,  319-322, 
335  ;  disapproves  of  Southey  as  court 
official,  113 

Helm,  the,  134 

Helmsley,  171 

Helvellyn,  19,  22,  125,  142,  163,  248 

Hemans,  Mrs.  Felicia,  12,  326 

Highgate,  208,  232 

Hogg,  James,  poems  of,  249  ;  associations 
with  Wordsworth,  284  ;  Wordsworth's 
poem  on  the  death  of,  294 

Holford,  65,  66 


INDEX 


351 


|[omer,  109 

:j  lutchinson,  Joanna,  243 

la  lutchinson,    Mary.      See    Wordsworth, 

Mrs. 
aJlutchinson,  Sarah,  284,  291 


[nversnaid,  239 

taly,  Wordsworth's  tour  in,  24S 


Jedburgh,  241,  242 

Jeffrey,    Francis— as   critic,   ii,  81,  93, 
98,    221,    244,    316-319 ;    connection 
with  Edinburgh  ReviezVy  255,  316 
•ijf Johnson,    Dr.    Samuel— as   critic,    7,   8, 
I7S>  176  ;  as  journalist,  47,  48 


K 


Kant,  Immanuel,  1 19-120 

Katrine,  Loch,  239 

Keats,  John — estimate  of,  by  De  Quin- 
cey,  212;  by  Wordsworth,  212,  271  ; 
by  Jeffrey,  316;  publication  of  "En- 
dymion,"  272  ;  criticism  by,  of  Milton, 
275  ;  intercourse  with  Wordsworth, 
271-275  ;  as  Romanticist,  271-277 

Keble,  John,  285,  286,  289 

Kendal,  171,  191 

Keswick,  12,  23,  47 

Kilchum  Castle,  239 

Kir  by,  171 

Kirkstone  Pass,  22 

Klopstock,  119 


Laidlaw,  Willie,  246-247 
Lakes,  the,  associated  with — 

Coleridge,  Hartley,  296 

De  Quincey,  196,  204-212 

Hamilton,  299 

Keats,  275 

Lamb,  Charles  and  INIary,  221-223 

North,  Christopher,  252 

Scott,  243,  244,  256 


Lamb,  Charles — 

Career  of— birth,  59 ;  childhood  in 
Hertfordshire,  60,  230  ;  at  Christ's 
Hospital,  59,  230  ;  at  Nether  Stowey, 
62-66,  217  ;  domestic  tragedy,  217  ; 
later  life  with  Mary  in  London,  at 
Margate,  Oxford,  Edmonton,  En- 
field,   224,    230-231  ;    death,    230, 

233 

Criticisms  by,  of — 
Bowles,  94 
Burns,  94 
Byron,  25S 
Coleridge,  61 
Cowper,  94 
Keats,  258 
Milton,  94 
Shelley,  258 

Southey,  94,  95  ;  orientalism,  no 
Wordsworth,  81,  94,  224  ;  compared 

with  Shakespeare,  225  ;  not  wholly 

admiring,  220 
Estimates  of,  by — 
Coleridge,  64-65 
Wordsworth,  219,  226  ;  appreciation 

of  "  Elia,"  232  ;  after  death,  233- 

235 
Family  of,  59,  60 
Literary   friendships   and    connections 

with — 
Clarksons,  the,  223 
Coleridge,  60-62,  219,  222;  letters 

to,  60-62,  94 
Haydon,  272,  274 
Keats,  272-274 
Lloyd,  76 

Monkhouse,  272-274 
Southey,  1 14 
Wordsworth,    62,    217,    218,    219- 

228,  231  ;  letter  to,  232 
Wordsworth,      Dorothy,      219-228, 

231 
Publications  of — 

"Essays  of  Elia,"  229 
"Tales  from  Shakespeare,"  224 
Style  of— as  critic,  61,  176,  220,  221, 
223,    225,  231,    316;   as  poet,    93, 
217;     as     letter-writer,     105,    228, 
232  ;  as  humorist,  217  ;  as  essayist, 
230-232  ;    compared    with    North, 
256 
Lamb,  John,  59,  61 


352 


WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 


Lamb,  Mary — in  London,  60 ;    insanity 
of,  61,  218,  224,  233  ;  tour  with  Charles 
in    the    Lakes,    222 ;    intimacy    with 
Dorothy  Wordsworth,  222,  223  ;  col- 
laboration   in    "Tales    from    Shake- 
speare," 224  ;  congenial  companion  to 
Charles,     225,     230;     Wordsworth's 
tribute  to,  234 
Lancashire,  ii,  20,  26 
Lancrigg,  298,  309 
Landor,  Walter  Savage,  1 14,  212,  304- 

305 
Langdale,  18 

Langdale  Pikes,  "lusty  twins"  of  "Ex- 
cursion," 20,  21,  22;  scenery  of,  26, 
287 
Langside,  25 
Lasswade,  239,  240 
Laud,  Archbishop,  286 
Le  Sage  (Alain-Rene),  213 
Leigh  Hunt,  183,  274 
Lessmg,  118,  1 19 
Liddesdale,  243 
Lincoln,  24 
Liverpool,  40 
Liverpool,  Lord,  152,  262 
Lloyd,  Charles,  58,  59,  76,  157 
Llyswen,  67 

Lockhart,  John  Gibson,  247,  256-257 
Lomond,  Loch,  237,  239 
London,  as  associated  with — 
Coleridge,  Hartley,  296 
Coleridge,    S.  T.,  60,  203;    lectures, 

199,  204 
Davy,  156 

De    Quincey,    203,    209,  211  ;    seeing 
"Convention    of    Cintra"   through 
the  Press,  204  ;  reading  for  the  Bar, 
207 
Lamb,  66,  228,  231 
Scott,  244 

Wordsworth,    17,   44,    49,    188,    223, 
228,  229,  244,  272,  289,  306,  311  ; 
"Prelude"   account,  153;   meeting 
with   Carlyle,    302,   303,   304;    last 
meeting  with  John,  160 
Longfellow,  Henry  Wadsworth,  93 
Lonsdale,    Lord — Wordsworth's     father 
agent     to,    24 ;     makes    Wordsworth 
Commissioner  of  Stamps,  280 ;  sonnet 
to,  282 


M 


Macaulay,  T,  B.,  99,  107 

Malta,  Coleridge  in,  198 

Manchester,  40,  103,  195,  196 

Margate,  230 

Martineau,  Harriet,  Wordsworth's  neigh 

hour  at  Ambleside,  12,  298,  308-309 

mutual  dislike,  297,  307  ;  on  Hartle; 

Coleridge,  297,  298 

Mathews,  James,  48 

Maurice,  F.  D.,  327 

Melrose,  241 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  appreciation  of  Words* 

worth  by,  326,  327 
Milnes,  Monckton,  56,  326 
Milton,  John — 

Classical  style  of,  i,  278 
Criticisms  of,  by — 
Arnold,  Dr.,  306 
Coleridge,  74,  78 
De  Quincey,  197 
Jeffrey,  318 
Lamb,  94 
Landor,  212 
Morley,  336 

Wordsworth,  78,  182,  286 
Southey  compared  with,  97,  109 
Wordsworth's    appreciation    of,     184, 
185  J  his  resemblance  to,  in  appear-" 
ance,  201  ;   Wordsworth   compared 
with,    278;    by   Southey,    1 15;    by 
Keats,   275 ;    by    North,    325 ;    by 
Morley,  330 
Otherwise   mentioned,    9,    182,    259-' 
261,  278,  329,  334 
Minto  Crags,  243 
Monkhouse,  272-274 
Monmouth,  Duke  of,  39 
Montague,  Basil,  49 
Montague,  Basil  (son),  80  ;  in  Dorothy's 

charge,  49,  50,  66 
Moore,  Thomas,  1 10,  289 
More,  Hannah,  41 
Morecombe,  18,  20 
Morley,  John,   as  Wordsworth's  critic, 

326,  327,  355 
Moxon,  233 
Mull,  239 
Murray,  John,  253 
Myers,  Frederick,  120,  335 


INDEX 


353 


N 


Nab  Scar,  125,  205,  279 
Nab  Cottage,  206 
Naples,  248 

Napoleon — Wordsworth's  dislike  of,  15, 
187,   190,  320  ;   loss  of  faith  in,   1S3, 
184  ;  sonnet  on,  185,  186 
Nelson,  Lord,  227;    SouLhey's   Life  of, 
107  ;  Wordsworth's  ideal  of  "Happy 
Warrior,"  167 
Newark  Castle,  247 
Newman,  Cardinal,  99 
Newton,  Isaac,  272 

Nether  Stowey,  home  of  Coleridge,  55, 
62,  68-91,  142;  of  the  Pooles,  56, 
57;  scenery  at,  64-91  ;  described  by 
Coleridge,  64  ;  visited  by  Wordsworth 
and  Dorothy,  55,  58,  59,  66,  142  ;  by 
Lamb,  59,  62-66,  217-218,  267;  by 
De  Quincey,  198;  "Lyrical  Ballads" 
planned  at,  323 
Nithsdale,  238 

North,  Christopher  (John  Wilson)— 
Appearance     of,     described     by    De 

Quincey,  253 
Career  of,  249-257 

Criticism'by,  of  Wordsworth,  196,  322, 
324-326,     329;     enthusiastic,      but 
discerning,  196,  250,  315 
Literary  connections  and  friendships 
with— 
Blackwood,  256-257 
Canning,  257 
De  Quincey,  253 
Scott,  256,  257 
Southey,  257 
Style — as    essayist,     compared     with 
Wordsworth's,        249-257  ;       with 
Lamb's,  256 ;  as  humourist,  256 


Ossian,  6-9 
Oxford,  60,  310 
Balliol  College,  Southey  at,  41,   42, 

194 
Magdalen  College,  North  at,  250,  252 
Oriel  College,   Hartley  Coleridge  at, 

296  ;  Poole,  John,  fellow  of,  56 
Visits  to,  by  Coleridge,  56  ;  by  Lamb, 
2  A 


Oxioxd—contiHued 

230;    by  Wordsworth,    for   degree, 
2S9 

Worcester  College,  De  Quincey  at,  197, 
1 98 


Parret,  39 

Pasley,  193 

Patterdale,  163 

Peebles,  240 

Peel,  Sir  Robert,  289 

Peel  Castle,  165,  263 

Pelter  Bridge,  199 

Pennines,  19 

Peninsular  War,  Wordsworth's  views  on, 
189-193 

Penrith,  20,  50,  158,  201,  222,  293 

Penzance,  156 

Percy's  "Reliques,"  8 

Petrarch's  sonnets,  185 

Philips,  Ambrose,  317 

Pinney,  49,  65 

Pitt,  William,  48 

Plumer,  59 

Poole,  Rev.  John,  57,  68 

Poole,  Thomas,  career  of,  55-58  ;  friend- 
ship with  Coleridge,  56,  57,  62,  142  ; 
with  Southey,  56  ;  with  Wordsworth, 
56,  70,  90 ;  with  Thelwall,  68  ;  with 
De  Quincey,  198;  with  Hartley 
Coleridge,  296 ;  revolutionary  ideas 
of,  56,  90 

Pope,  Alexander,  5,  6,  8,  259 

Porson,  305 

Portugal,  190  J  Southey  in,  50,  54,  104  ; 
Quillinan  in,  293 

Praed,  Robert,  I02 


Quantocks,  the,  62,  64,  65,  77,  So,  91  ; 
Wordsworth  and  Dorothy  among, 
55-59>  61,  139  ;  "  Lyrical  Ballads  " 
planned  among,  323 

Quillinan,  Edward,  career  of,  292-293  ; 
at  Southey's  funeral,  1 16;  literary 
works,  293 ;  marriage  with  Miss 
Bryder,  293  ;  with  Dora  Wordsworth, 
293  ;  Graves's  guest  to  meet  Hamilton 
and  Butler,    299  ;  attacks   Landor   in 


354 


WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 


Wordsworth's  defence,  305  ;  friend  of 
Crabb  Robinson,  306  ;  Wordsworth  at 
death  of,  313 
Quillinan,  Rotha,  293 


Racedown,  Wordsworth  and  Dorothy  at, 
49-50,  65,  66,  129,  149  ;  Coleridge's 
visits  to,  55,  58,  59,  141,  149 

Radcliffe,  Mrs.,  6,  196,  261 

Raincock,  William,  of  Rayrigg,  31 

Raise,  142,  189,  226 

Raleigh,  Prof.  Walter,  critic  of  Words- 
worth, 336-337 

Ratzeburg,  Coleridge  at,  119 

Rawson  family,  46 

Redcliffe  Hall,  54 

Reed,  Prof.  Henry,  300,  301 

Reynolds,  John  Hamilton,  275 

Richardson,  Lady  (Mary  Fletcher), 
309-311 

Richardson,  Sir  John,  309 

Robertson,  Frederick,  289  ;  estimate  of 
Wordsworth  by,  328,  329 

Robespierre,  46,  47,  56 

Robinson,  H.  Crabb.  61?^  Crabb  Robin- 
son 

Rogers,  Samuel,  2S9,  290,  294-295 

Rosslyn,  240 

Rothay,  scenery,  22,  125,  279 

Rousseau,  Jean  Jacques,  revolutionary 
views  of,  shared  by  Wordsworth,  3  ; 
by  Southey,  41,  42 ;  Wordsworth's 
supposed  discipleship  of,  317  ;  his 
likeness  to,  335 
Ruberslaw,  243 

Rugby,  12,  126,  307 

Ruskin,  John,  12,  20,  74,  245,  246,  301 

Rydal,  19,  22,   125,  127,  135,  137,  286, 

335 
Rydal  Beck,  125 
Rydal  Cottage,  293 
Rydal  Mount,  125,  149,  279 

Description  of,  by  Dorothy  Words- 
worth, 140 
Visits  to,  by— Canning,  256  ;  Scott, 
256  ;  Keats,  275  ;  Hamilton,  299  ; 
Emerson,  30 1;  Crabb  Robinson, 306; 
H.  Martineau,  308 ;  I.  Fenwick, 
311 
Wordsworth's    home    at,     114,    207, 


279-313 ;   school    feast   on    his  birth. 

day,  311 
Rydal  Nab,  211 
Rydal  Water,  125,  1S5,  199,  279 


St.  Albyn  family,  65,  90 

St.  Andrews,  24 

St.  John's  Vale,  19 ;  in  "  The  Wag- 
goner," 227 

Salisbury,  24 

Salt,  Samuel,  59 

San  Domingo,  187 

Sandys,  Edwin,  Archbishop  of  York,  26 

Sayers  (Norwich  poet),  no 

Scafell  Pike,  20 

Scandale  Beck,  125 

Scawfell,  18,  20 

Scotland — Scott  the  revealer  of,  236  ; 
Wordsworth's  tours  in,  237-243,  247, 
284,  289  ;  Dorothy's  journal  of  first 
tour,  68,  237 

Scott,  Anne,  247,  256,  257 

Scott,  Lady,  240,  243,  247 

Scott,  Major,  247 

Scott,  Sir  Walter- 
Career  of — candidate  for  Laureateship, 
97  ;  at  Lasswade,  239  ;  Sheriff  of 
Selkirkshire,  239  ;  Wordsworth's 
and  Dorothy's  visit  to,  237,  239, 
240 ;  Jedburgh  Assizes,  240,  242  ; 
at  Melrose  with  Wordsworth  and 
Dorothy,  241  ;  at  Hawick,  243  ;  at 
the  Lakes,  243,  244 ;  climbs  Hel- 
vellyn  with  Wordsworth  and  Davy, 
243  ;  with  Anne  and  Lockhart  in 
Ireland,  256  ;  at  the  Lakes  with 
North,  256-257  ;  Wordsworth's  and 
Dora's  visit  to  Abbotsford,  246-248  ; 
visit  to  Newark  Castle,  247  ;  journey 
to  Naples,  248  ;  death  of,  246 
Character  of,  237,  240,  242,  246,  278 
Criticisms   by — of    North,    254;     of 

Wordsworth,  237,  244,  245 
Estimates  of,  by — 
Byron,  96 
Goethe,  99 
Jeffrey,  216 
Ruskin,  245 

Wordsworth,     10,    99,     213,     236, 
237,  240,  243-246 


INDEX 


35i 


Scott,  Sir  Walter — continued 

Literary   friendships    and  connections 
with — 

Byron,  96 

Canning,  256 

North,  256,  257 

Southey,  257 

Turner,  247 

Wordsworth,  10,  240-244,  246-258  ; 
letter  after  first  meeting,  243 ; 
tribute  to,  in  "  Extempore  Effu- 
sion,".249 

Wordsworth,  Dorothy,  239-244, 
246 

Wordsworth,  Mrs.,  246 
Publications  of — 

"Demonology  and  Witchcraft,"  246 

*'  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel,"  93,  240 

"  Marmion,"  93 

"  Minstrelsy  of  the  Scottish  Border," 

239 
Novels,  99,  213,  247 
Reputation  of,  96,  108,  316 
Style  of,  6,  99,  240,   243,   245,   316; 
compared  with  Wordsworth,  93,  236, 
237  ;  influenced  by  Wordsworth,  325 

Seeley,  Sir  John,  183,  335 

Shairp,  John  Campbell,  330-333 

Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,  attitude  of,  to- 
wards Lake  school,  12  ;  estimate  of, 
by  Matthew  Arnold,  269,  270;  by 
Wordsworth,  262 ;  his  opinion  of 
Wordsworth,  262  ;  publication  of  "  Re- 
volt of  Islam,"  272  ;  style  and  theories 
of,  262-271 

Shelvocke's  voyages,  77 

Shenstone,  William,  82 

Silver  How,  22,  134,  140 

Simpson,  Margaret.  See  De  Quincey, 
Mrs. 

Skiddaw,  associations  of,  with  Words- 
worth, II,  23,  24,  104  ;  Lake  poets  at 
bonfire  on,  115;  Charles  and  Mary 
Lamb  near,  222;  in  "The  Wag- 
goner," 227 

Snowdon,  152 

Sockburn-on-Tees,  124-128,  282 

Solway,  22 

Somerset,  scenery  of,  17,  39,  40  J  Cole- 
ridge in,  42,  43,  46,  56  ;  Southey  in, 
42,  46,  56  ;  Wordsworth  in,  55,  58, 
59-91,  142  ;  conservatism  of,  90 


Southey,  Robert — 

Appearance  of,  100-104 

Career    of— at   Westminster    School, 

41  ;  at  Balliol,  41,  94 ;   Coleridge's 

visit  to,  42,  56,  104  ;  at  Bristol,  42, 

56,  60  ;  emigration  scheme,  42-43, 

46  ;  tours  in  Somerset,  42,  43  ;  at 

Nether  Stowey,  56  ;  engagement  to 

Edith   Fricker,   43 ;    at   Bath,   43  ; 

marriage,  43,  92,  104 ;  in  Portugal, 

50,  54,  93  ;  at  Bristol,  55,  93  ;  Poet 

Laureate,  97,   104  ;  at  Greta  Hall, 

II,  23,  92,  100,  104,  114  ;  death  of 

first  wife,    115;  on    the  Continent, 

116  ;  at  Lymington,  116  ;  marriage 

with  Caroline  Bowles,  116  ;   death 

of,  116,  298 
Character  of,    92,   103-106,    113-115, 

117 
Criticisms  by,  of — 

Byron,  113 

Coleridge,  81 

De  Quincey,  206,  208 

Wordsworth,  81,  115,  322 
Estimates  of,  by — 

Byron,  97.  "S 

Carlyle,  99,  103 

Coleridge,  98 

De  Quincey,  10 1,  213 

Jeffrey,  317 

Lamb,  94 

Macaulay,  99 

Newman,  99 

Stanley,  99 

Wordsworth,  lo,  1 13 
Literary  connections  with — 

Byron,  97»  "3 

Canning,  256,  257 

Carlyle,  101-104 

Coleridge,  42,  54,  94,  98 

Cottle,  41 

De  Quincey,  loi,  203,  206,  208,  213 

Fenwick,  Isabella,  102-103 

Jeffrey,  317 

Lamb,  94 

Landor,  212,  305 

Lovell,  43,  76 

North,  256 

Scott,  256 

Wordsworth,  10,  54,  II3,  "5; 
criticises  Wordsworth,  322  ;  in- 
fluenced by  him,  325 


S56 


WORDSWORTH    AND    HIS   CIRCLE 


Southey,  Robert — continued 

Parentage  of,  41 

Politics  of,  42-43,  56,  99 

Popularity  of,  li,  12,  99,  316 

Publications  of,  94-95,  107,  1 13 

Religion  of,  44.  57 

Reputation  of — as  poet,  99,  107,  109  ; 
as  prose  writer,  107 ;  inferior  to 
Wordsworth  and  Coleridge,  104 

Style     of,    92-96,     99-100,    107-113, 

277;   humorous,    105;   imaginative, 

95 ;  his  orientalism,  no  ;  originality, 

109  ;  romanticism,  6,  95 

Southey,  Mrs.  (Caroline  Bowles),  116 

Southey,  Mrs.  (Edith  Fricker),  106,  114, 

115 

Southey,  Robert,  41 

Spain,  Wordsworth's  sympathy  with, 
1S9,  193,  262 

Speddings,  the,  47 

Spenser,  Edmund,  185,  197,  259,  261 

Stanley,  Dean,  99 

Steele,  Sir  Richard,  48 

Stephen,  Sir  l/cslie,  essay  by,  on  Words- 
worth, 332 

Steepholme,  39 

Sterling,  John,  326 

Sterne,  Rev.  Lawrence,  220 

Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  10 

Stewart,  Mary,  Queen  of  Scots,  25 

Stone,  Arthur,  134 

Storrs,  256 

Swinburne,  Algernon  Charles,  335 

Switzerland,  Wordsworth's  anger  at  loss 
of  freedom  by,  15,  184,  262 


Talfourd,  305 

Tarbet,  237 

Tasso,  109,  185 

Taylor,  Sir  Henry,  friendship  of,  with 
Southey,  loi,  103,  114  ;  with  Isabella 
Fenwick,  102,  311 ;  with  Carlyle,  103, 
303  ;  with  Wordsworth,  303  ;  famous 
for  good  looks,  311  ;.  Wordsworth's 
advocate  in  the  Quarterly,  327,  328 

Taylor,  Rev.  William,  27,  28,  46 

Tennyson,  Lord,  delicacy  of  versification 
of.   III ;  dawn  of  fame  of,  289,  290  ; 


pestered  by  tourists,  294  ;  popularity 
of,  326,  329,  330  J  Wordsworth's  appre- 
ciation of,  290  ;  otherwise  mentioned, 
4,  204 

Thackeray,  William  Makepeace,  334 

Thelwall,  John,  67,  68   90 

Thirlmere,  scenery  of,  22,  23  ;  asso- 
ciated with  "  The  Waggoner,"  134, 
226 

Thomson,  8,  82 

Tintern  Abbey,  91,  275 

Tooke,  Horn,  67 

Trafalgar,  167,  184,  188 

Truro,  156 

Turner,  247,  301 

Tweed,  239,  242,  247 

Tyson,  Ann,  26,  27 


U 

Ullswater,  19,  22,  126,  157,  163,  202 
Ulverston,  45,  47 


Vale  of  St.  John,  23 
Valley  of  Rocks,  77 
Venice,  187,  261,  262 
Vimiero,  189,  190 
Virgil,  109 
Voltaire,  272,  305 


W 


Warton,  Joseph,  7,  176 

Wales,    furnaces    of,    39 ;   De   Quincey 

in,  195,  196  ;  Scott  in,  256 
Walpole,  Horace,  6,  9 
Wansfell,  22 
Watchet,  77 
Waterloo,  184,  188,  284 
Wellington,  Duke  of,  193 
Wesley,  John,  107 
West  Country,  40 
Westminster  School,  41 
Westmorland,    descriptions    of,    11,    19, 

20  ;  Wordsworth's  tour  in,  with  John 

and  Coleridge,  1 25-1 28 
"White  Moss,"  135,  199,  313 


INDEX 


357 


Whitman,  Walt,  222 

Whitwick,  290 

Wieland,  118,  119 

Wilberforce,  156 

Wilson,  John.     See  North 

Windermere,  11,  12,  18-20,  26,  31,  32, 
125,  126,  257,  293,  299 

Windsor,  46 

Windybrow,  47,  48,  50,  129 

Wither,  219 

Wordsworth,  Charles,  24 

Wordsworth,  Rev.  Christopher,  24,  44, 
272 

Wordsworth,  Dora,  birth  of,  174 ;  girl- 
hood, 292  ;  Applethwaite  presented 
to,  157  ;  visit  to  Scott  with  Words- 
worth, 246-248  ;  in  London,  272  ; 
Hamilton's  writing  in  album  of,  299, 
300;  marriage  of,  306,  312;  literary 
works  of,  293  ;  death  of,  293 

Wordsworth,  Dorothy,  companionship 
of,  with  her  brother,  46-55,  65-91, 
1 18-163,  169,  189,  203-205,  207-291  J 
her  influence  on  him,  50-58  ;  friend- 
ship with  Coleridge,  55-155,  204, 
237-238 ;  with  De  Quincey,  200,  202, 
205-212,  223  ;  with  Lamb,  223-224, 
228,  231,  232 ;  with  Rogers,  295 ; 
journals  of,  68,  80,  141,  158,  189, 
237,  284 ;  illnesses  of,  232,  233,  290, 

309,  313 

Wordsworth,  John  (brother),  birth  of, 
24;  career  of,  158-163  ;  tour  in  Lake 
district,  125-128;  estimates  of,  by 
Coleridge,  125  ;  by  Dorothy,  161  ;  by 
Wordsworth,  158,  159,  160 ;  death 
of,  161  ;  Wordsworth's  poems  on, 
161-169 ;  Wordsworth's  ideal  of 
*'  Happy  Warrior,"  167 

Wordsworth,  John  (grand-nephew), 
Bishop  of  Salisbury,  24 

Wordsworth,  John  (son),  birth  of,  174  j 
on  Skiddaw,  115  ;  with  De  Quincey, 
202  ;  house  kept  by  Dorothy,  290 ; 
marriage  of,  292  ;  at  Wordsworth's 
funeral,  313 

Wordsworth,  Katy,  174,  175,  209 

Wordsworth,  Mrs.  (Mary  Hutchinson), 
marriage  of,  137,  170 ;  at  Skiddaw 
bonfire,  115;  appearance  described 
by  De  Quincey,  201  ;  walk  with  De 
Quincey,     202 ;     at     Rydal     during 


Scotch   tour,    237,    243  ;   in    London, 
272  ;    Scotch   tour,    284 ;    visited    by 
De   Quincey,  200  ;  by  Yarnall,  300  ; 
by   H.   Martincau,    308;    by  Isabella 
Fenwick,    312;   death   of,    313;   esti- 
mates of,  by  Wordsworth  (in  "Pre- 
lude"),    171;    by   Carlyle,    173;    by 
De  Quincey,  173  ;  by  H.  Martineau, 
309;   lines  in  "Daffodils"  suggested 
by,  72 
Wordsworth,  Richard  (brother),  24 
Wordsworth,  Richard  (father),  24 
Wordsworth,    Thomas,    174,    175,    210, 

224 
Wordsworth,    William    (son),    birth    of, 
174 ;    with   Lamb  in    London,    228  ; 
marriage   of,    292 ;    at   Wordsworth's 
funeral,  313 
Wordsworth,  William — 

Career  of — birth,  44 ;  childhood  at 
Cockermouth,  24-25 ;  schooldays 
at  Hawkshead,  25-38  ;  at  Cam- 
bridge, 36-38,  44,  46,  49,  298  ; 
visits  to  France,  44,  46  ;  tour  in 
Wye  Valley,  45 ;  at  Forncett,  46  ; 
in  the  Lake  district,  46-50 ;  at 
Racedown  Lodge,  49-58,  60 ; 
visited  by  Coleridge,  55  ;  visit  of, 
to  Coleridge  at  Nether  Stowey,  55, 
58*  59}  65  ;  at  Alfoxden,  66-91  ; 
walk  to  Lynton  with  Dorothy  and 
Coleridge  —  plan  of  "  Ancient 
Mariner,"  77;  at  Nether  Stowey, 
91  ;  in  the  Wye  Valley,  91  ;  in 
Germany,  118- 124;  at  Sockburn, 
124,  128  ;  Grasmerc  visit,  128  ; 
Dove  Cottage,  Grasmere,  12  ;  at 
Calais,  170,  222  ;  marriage  and 
wedding  tour,  170,  171  ;  his  children, 
174  ;  Scotch  tour  with  Dorothy,  237- 
244 ;  at  the  Rectory,  Grasmere, 
174;  visit  to  Bootle,  174;  Katy's 
death,  175  ;  Tom's  death,  175,  210  ; 
at  Allan  Bank,  189,  203-205  ;  De 
Quincey's  visit  to,  205  ;  appointed 
Commissioner  of  Stamps,  280 ;  at 
Rydal  Mount,  207,  224,  275,  279- 
313  ;  Scotch  tour  with  his  wife,  284  ; 
in  Ireland,  299 ;  Scotch  tour  with 
Dora,  247  ;  visits  to  London,  272, 
289  ;  tour  on  the  Continent,  289  ;  in 
Italy,  248  ;  honours  at  Cambridge 


358 


WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS   CIRCLE 


Wordsworth,  William — continued 

and   Oxford,  289 ;   Poet  Laureate, 
289,  312  ;  death  of  Dora,  293,  309  ; 
death,  294,  313  ;  grave,  313 
Characteristics  of — 
Abstemiousness,  206 
AfiFection,  161,  232,  233,  237,  254 
Despondency,  136 
Egotism,  2,  119,  220,  272 
Humour,  lack  of,  16,  89 
Imagination,  13,  31 
Nature,  love  of,  14,  17,  27-3S,  45 
Originality,  3 
Philosophical  bent,  13-15,  120,  123, 

237 
Reserve,  208 

Self-complacency,  152,  274 
Tranquillity,  15,  51 
Comparison  of,  with — 
Arnold,  INIatthew,  290 
Brownhig,  Robert,  290 
Burns,  338 

Byron,  4,  261-262,  277 
Dante,  336 
Dickens,  334 
Dryden,  339 
Eliot,  George,  334 
Goethe,  335 
Gray,  338 
Keats,  271-278 
Milton,    201,    275,   27S,    333,    334, 

336,  338 
Pope,  339 

Scott,  4,  236,  237,  244,  245,  277 
Shakespeare,    54,    333,    334,    336, 

338 

Shelley,  262-271,  333,  338 

Southey,  92,  277 

Tennyson,  4,  290 

Thackeray,  334 
Critic  as,  175-177 
Criticisms  by,  of — 

Brownin^,  Robert,  290 

Burns,  82,  23S-239 

Byron,  258,  261,  263 

Carlyle,  302-304 

Coleridge,  233-235,  237,  258,  263 

Cowper,  8 

Emerson,  30 1,  302 

Goethe,  305 

Gray,  8,  9 

himself,  2 


Wordsworth,  William  — contmued 
Criticisms  by,  of — continued 
Keats,  212,  258,  271 
Lamb,  226,  233-235 
Landor,  304,  305 
Milton,  306 
North,  251 
Ossian,  9 

Percy's  "  Reliques,"  8 
Pope,  8 
Ruskin,  301 
Scott,  213,  237,  240,  243,   245-249, 

258 
Shelley,  258,  262,  263 
Southey,  113,  305 
Tennyson,  290 
Thomson,  8 
Turner,  301 
Voltaire,  272 
Estimates  of,  by — 

Arnold,  Matthew,  281,  330,  332,  333, 

335 
Brimley,  George,  329 
Brooke,  Stopford,  334-335 
Byron,  258,  261,  335 
Carlyle,  302-304 
Church,  Dean,  333 
Coleridge,  3,   183,    192,  258,   322- 

324,  329,  335 

Crabb  Robinson,  305,  306 

De  Quincey,  17,  183,  195,  196,  197, 

216,  315 
Fenwick,  Isabella,  311,  312 
Hazlitt,  183,  215,  319-322,  335 
Jeffrey,  31,  244,  316-319.  329,  335 
Keats,  258,  274 
Lamb,  81,  219-222 
Landor,  304-305 
Leigh  Hunt,  183,  274 
Martineau,  Harriet,  297,  307-309 
Maurice,  F.  D.,  327,  328 
Morley,  John,  335-337 
Mill,  John  Stuart,  326,  327 
Myers,  Frederick,  335 
North,  196,  250-254,  256,  315,  322, 

325.  329 
Raleigh,  Prof.,  397 
Robertson,  Frederick,  328-329 
Scott,  244-245,  258 

Seeley,  Sir  John,  335 

Shairp,  John  Campbell,  330-332 

Shelley,  258 


INDEX 


359 


Wordsworth,  William — continued 
Estimates  of,  by — continued 
Southey,  8i,  115 
Stephen,  Sir  Leslie,  332 
Swinburne,  Algernon  Charles,  335 
Taylor,  327 
Yarnall,  301 
Fame  of,  17,  289;  Southey's  view  of, 
II5>  315-340;  Toet  Laureate,  289, 
312,  313 
Family    of,    24,    46,    174,    175,    291, 

292  i^ 

Literary  connections  and   friendships 
wth — 
Arnold,  Dr.,  12,  298,  306-307,  313 
Baillie,  Joanna,  305 
Beaumont,  157 

Browning,  Elizabeth  Barrett,  290 
Browning,  Robert,  15,  290 
Byron,  10 

Cal verts,  the,  47-50,  133 
Carlyle,  302-304 
Clarksons,  the,  156 
Coleridge,  Hartley,  295,  298 
Coleridge,  S.  T.,  9,  12,  55-91,  Ii8- 

155.  156,  162,  291 
Davy,  Humphry,  156 
De  Quincey,  195-216 
Dewey,  14 

Fenwick,  Isabella,  3 10-3 1 2 

Fletchers,  the,  309-311 

Fox,  15 

Graves,  R.  P.,  299 

Hamilton,  Rowan,  298,  300 

Hemans,  Mrs.,  12 

Jeffrey,  ii 

Keats,  10 

Lamb,  217-235 

Landor,  304-305 

Lloyd, 157 

Martineau,  Harriet,  12,  298,  307 

Montague,  Basil,  49 

North,    Christopher,     12,    249-254, 
256,  305 

Pinney,  49 

I       Poole,  90 
Quillinan,  Edward,  293-313 
Reed,  Prof.,  300 
Rogers,  290,  294,  295 
Ruskin,  12 
Scott,  10,  239-248 


Wordswor th ,  William  — continued 

Literary   connections   j^d    friendships 
with — continued     \ 
Southey,  54,  92,  Ii4-n7.  203,  305 
Talfourd,  305 

Taylor,  27,  46,  121,  311,  312 
Tennyson,  290 
Thehvall,  67-69,  90 
Walpole,  90 
Yarnall,  300 

^ga-rentage  of,  24,  46,  90 
Personality  of,  201  j  when  composing, 
ZS7';  described  by  Coleridge,  292  ; 
by  Mrs.  Hamilton,  299  ;  by  Yarnall, 
300,  301  ;  by  Emerson,  301  ;  by 
Carlyle,  303 ;  by  Harriet  Mar- 
tineau, 307,  309  ;  likeness  to  Dante, 

313 

Politics  of,  14,  45,  90  ;  revolutionary 
views,  90, 92  ;  in  the  Grasmerc  days, 
183-194 ;  conservatism,  275,  281, 
284-285 ;  disbelief  in  despotism, 
300 ;  sympathy  with  French  Re- 
volution, 3,  15,  45,  183,  301  ;  dis- 
gust at  French  Revolution,  15,  45, 
183-194, 301  ;  sympathy  with  Spain, 
189,  193,  262 
Popularity  of,  17  ;  never  great  in  early 

days,  289,  315,  329,  338 
Publications  of — 
"Borderers,"  54 
"  Convention  of  Cintra,"  195 
"Descriptive  Sketches,"  3,  44 
"Evening  Voluntaries,"  2S7 
"Excursion,"  54,  149,  152-155,  222, 

225,  282,  316,  318 
"Independence    and    Freedom     of 

Nations,"  190 
"  Laodamia,"  225,  282 
"Lyrical  Ballads,"  7,  9,  17,  79-81, 
84-88,    91,     160,    (preface)    177, 
195,  198,  219,  237,  250,  259,  315, 

Z^^y  317,  319,  334 

"  Musings  near  Aquapendente," 
248 

"  National  Independence  and  Lib- 
erty, Sonnets  dedicated  to,"  15 

"Ode  on  Intimations  of  Immor- 
tality," 152,  155,  161,  274,  287- 
289,  318 

"Ode  to  Duly,"  161 

"Old  Cumberland  Beggar,"  81 


360 


WORDSWORTH   AND   HIS    CIRCLE 


Wordsworth,  William — continued 
Publications  of — continued 

"Peter  Bell,"  8i,  88,  89,  225,  226, 

228,  275 
"Prelude,"  51-53,    124,    148,    149, 

152,  161,  222,  263,  298 
"Recluse,"  129,  152 
"Resolution     and    Independence," 

135 

"  River  Duddon,"  sonnets,  287 
"Stanzas    written     in   my    pocket- 
copy     of    Thomson's  '  Castle    of 
Indolence,'  "  133 
"Tintern  Abbey,"  275 
"Waggoner,"  i6r,  226,  228 
"  White  Doe  of  Rylstone,  203,  282, 

318,  319 
"Yarrow  Revisited,"  247 
"  Yarrow  Visited,"  284 
Religion  of,   13,  31-36,  44,  45  ;  as  a 
Churchman,  285  ;  in  grief,  162,  263, 
333 


Wordsworth,  William — contitiued 

Style  of^maginative,  6,  13,  31,  78, 
228;  lacking  in  charm,  12;  in 
humour,  17,  89;  simple,  78,  151^ 
in  sonnets,  185 ;  fastidious  in  diction, 
292 

Workington,  23 

Wycherley,  322 

Wye  district,  45,  91,  129 

Wyke  Regis,  164 

Wytheburn,  19,  134,  226 


Yarnall,  Ellis,  300-301 

Yarrow,  Wordsworth's  visit  to,  247,  249 
284 

Yarrow  unvisited,  240 

Yeovil,  39 

Yorkshire,  comparison  of  Western,  with 
Lake  district,  19  ;  Wordsworth's  family 
from,  24  ;  Wordsworth  in,  170 


CJ' 


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^^Q  24  1980 


n:c  CiK.    i;,AR  18   i^' 


KHCEIVED  E/ 


^^^10  1980 


(N883^r0)47V5:-'A'-Sfe^*  ^    . . -  JjMlVersity  of  Cahf orm a 


Berkeley 


il 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CAUFORNIA  UBRARY 


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